Planimetric ice-flow convergence and flow-orthonormal strain rate across the Antarctic Ice Sheet, with links to model result files ...

Fast-flowing ice streams discharge most of the ice from the interior of the Antarctic Ice Sheet coastward. Understanding how their tributary organisation is governed and evolves is essential for developing reliable models of the ice sheet's response to climate change. Despite much research on i...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Ng, Felix S L
Format: Dataset
Language:English
Published: PANGAEA 2015
Subjects:
Online Access:https://dx.doi.org/10.1594/pangaea.841137
https://doi.pangaea.de/10.1594/PANGAEA.841137
Description
Summary:Fast-flowing ice streams discharge most of the ice from the interior of the Antarctic Ice Sheet coastward. Understanding how their tributary organisation is governed and evolves is essential for developing reliable models of the ice sheet's response to climate change. Despite much research on ice-stream mechanics, this problem is unsolved, because the complexity of flow within and across the tributary networks has hardly been interrogated. Here I present the first map of planimetric flow convergence across the ice sheet, calculated from satellite measurements of ice surface velocity, and use it to explore this complexity. The convergence map of Antarctica elucidates how ice-stream tributaries draw ice from the interior. It also reveals curvilinear zones of convergence along lateral shear margins of streaming, and abundant convergence ripples associated with nonlinear ice rheology and changes in bed topography and friction. Flow convergence on ice-stream tributaries and their feeding zones is markedly uneven, ... : Supplement to: Ng, Felix S L (2015): Spatial complexity of ice flow across the Antarctic Ice Sheet. Nature Geoscience, 8(10) ...