Geothermal heat flux is the dominant source of uncertainty in englacial-temperature-based dating of ice rise formation ...

• Main Authors: Montelli, Aleksandr, Kingslake, Jonathan
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: Copernicus GmbH 2023
• Subjects: 37 Earth Sciences; 3709 Physical Geography and Environmental Geoscience; 3705 Geology; 13 Climate Action; Crary Ice Rise; Antarc*; Antarctica; Ice Shelves
• Online Access: https://dx.doi.org/10.17863/cam.93075; https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/handle/1810/345652

Abstract. Ice rises are areas of locally grounded, slow-moving ice adjacent to floating ice shelves. Temperature profiles measured through ice rises contain information regarding changes to their dynamic evolution and external forcings, such as past surface temperatures, past accumulation rates and geothermal heat flux. While previous work has used borehole temperature–depth measurements to infer one or two such parameters, there has been no systematic investigation of parameter sensitivity to the interplay of multiple external forcings and dynamic changes. A one-dimensional vertical heat flow forward model developed here examines how changing forcings affect temperature profiles. Further, using both synthetic data and previous measurements from the Crary Ice Rise in Antarctica, we use our model in a Markov chain Monte Carlo inversion to demonstrate that this method has potential as a useful dating technique that can be implemented at ice rises across Antarctica. However, we also highlight the non-uniqueness ...