Modelling the Hydrology of the Greenland Ice Sheet ...

• Main Author: Banwell, Alison
• Format: Thesis
• Language: English
• Published: Apollo - University of Cambridge Repository 2013
• Subjects: Greenland ice sheet; glacier hydrology; modelling; glaciology; glacier; Greenland; Ice Sheet
• Online Access: https://dx.doi.org/10.17863/cam.13645; https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/handle/1810/267715

There is increasing recognition that the hydrology of the Greenland Ice Sheet plays an important role in the dynamics and therefore mass balance of the ice sheet. Understanding the hydrology of the ice sheet and being able to predict its future behaviour is therefore a key aspect of glaciological research. To date, the ice sheet’s hydrology has tended to be inferred from the analysis of surface velocity measurements, or modelled in a theoretical, idealised way. This study focuses on the development of a high spatial (100 m) and temporal (1 hour) resolution, physically based, time-dependent hydrological model which is applied to the ~2,300 km2 Paakitsoq region, West Greenland, and is driven, calibrated, and evaluated using measured data. The model consists of three components. First, net runoff is calculated across the ice sheet from a distributed, surface energy- balance melt model coupled to a subsurface model, which calculates changes in temperature, density and water content in the snow, firn and ...