Generating synthetic fjord bathymetry for coastal Greenland ...

Bed topography is a critical boundary for the numerical modelling of ice sheets and ice-ocean interactions. A persistent issue with existing topography products for the bed of the Greenland Ice Sheet and surrounding sea floor is the poor representation of coastal bathymetry, especially in regions of...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Williams, CN, Cornford, SL, Jordan, TM, Dowdeswell, JA, Siegert, MJ, Clark, CD, Swift, DA, Sole, A, Fenty, I, Bamber, JL
Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
Language:English
Published: Copernicus Publications 2017
Subjects:
Online Access:https://dx.doi.org/10.17863/cam.9197
https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/handle/1810/263821
Description
Summary:Bed topography is a critical boundary for the numerical modelling of ice sheets and ice-ocean interactions. A persistent issue with existing topography products for the bed of the Greenland Ice Sheet and surrounding sea floor is the poor representation of coastal bathymetry, especially in regions of floating ice and near the grounding line. Sparse data coverage, and the resultant coarse resolution at the ice-ocean boundary, poses issues in our ability to model ice flow advance and retreat from the present position. In addition, as fjord bathymetry is known to exert strong control on ocean circulation and ice-ocean forcing, the lack of bed data leads to an inability to model these processes adequately. Since the release of the last complete Greenland bed topography-bathymetry product, new observational bathymetry data have become available. These data can be used to constrain bathymetry, but many fjords remain completely unsampled and therefore poorly resolved. Here, as part of the development of the next ...