The Short-Timescale Behavior of Glacial Ice
Glaciers are often assumed to deform only at slow (i.e., glacial) rates. However, with the advent of high rate geodetic observations of ice motion, many of the intricacies of glacial deformation on hourly and daily timescales have been observed and quantified. This thesis explores two such short tim...
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ftdatacite:10.7907/5bv8-9j47 2023-05-15T14:02:22+02:00 The Short-Timescale Behavior of Glacial Ice Thompson, Jeffrey Muir 2013 PDF https://dx.doi.org/10.7907/5bv8-9j47 https://resolver.caltech.edu/CaltechTHESIS:06062013-094032857 en eng California Institute of Technology No commercial reproduction, distribution, display or performance rights in this work are provided. Viscoelasticity Ocean Tides Ice Streams Meltwater Lakes Stress-Transmission Lake Drainage Antarctica Greenland Geophysics FOS Earth and related environmental sciences Solid Mechanics Finite Element Modeling Glaciology Thesis Text Dissertation thesis 2013 ftdatacite https://doi.org/10.7907/5bv8-9j47 2021-11-05T12:55:41Z Glaciers are often assumed to deform only at slow (i.e., glacial) rates. However, with the advent of high rate geodetic observations of ice motion, many of the intricacies of glacial deformation on hourly and daily timescales have been observed and quantified. This thesis explores two such short timescale processes: the tidal perturbation of ice stream motion and the catastrophic drainage of supraglacial meltwater lakes. Our investigation into the transmission length-scale of a tidal load represents the first study to explore the daily tidal influence on ice stream motion using three-dimensional models. Our results demonstrate both that the implicit assumptions made in the standard two-dimensional flow-line models are inherently incorrect for many ice streams, and that the anomalously large spatial extent of the tidal influence seen on the motion of some glaciers cannot be explained, as previously thought, through the elastic or viscoelastic transmission of tidal loads through the bulk of the ice stream. We then discuss how the phase delay between a tidal forcing and the ice stream’s displacement response can be used to constrain in situ viscoelastic properties of glacial ice. Lastly, for the problem of supraglacial lake drainage, we present a methodology for implementing linear viscoelasticity into an existing model for lake drainage. Our work finds that viscoelasticity is a second-order effect when trying to model the deformation of ice in response to a meltwater lake draining to a glacier’s bed. The research in this thesis demonstrates that the first-order understanding of the short-timescale behavior of naturally occurring ice is incomplete, and works towards improving our fundamental understanding of ice behavior over the range of hours to days. Thesis Antarc* Antarctica Greenland DataCite Metadata Store (German National Library of Science and Technology) Greenland |
institution |
Open Polar |
collection |
DataCite Metadata Store (German National Library of Science and Technology) |
op_collection_id |
ftdatacite |
language |
English |
topic |
Viscoelasticity Ocean Tides Ice Streams Meltwater Lakes Stress-Transmission Lake Drainage Antarctica Greenland Geophysics FOS Earth and related environmental sciences Solid Mechanics Finite Element Modeling Glaciology |
spellingShingle |
Viscoelasticity Ocean Tides Ice Streams Meltwater Lakes Stress-Transmission Lake Drainage Antarctica Greenland Geophysics FOS Earth and related environmental sciences Solid Mechanics Finite Element Modeling Glaciology Thompson, Jeffrey Muir The Short-Timescale Behavior of Glacial Ice |
topic_facet |
Viscoelasticity Ocean Tides Ice Streams Meltwater Lakes Stress-Transmission Lake Drainage Antarctica Greenland Geophysics FOS Earth and related environmental sciences Solid Mechanics Finite Element Modeling Glaciology |
description |
Glaciers are often assumed to deform only at slow (i.e., glacial) rates. However, with the advent of high rate geodetic observations of ice motion, many of the intricacies of glacial deformation on hourly and daily timescales have been observed and quantified. This thesis explores two such short timescale processes: the tidal perturbation of ice stream motion and the catastrophic drainage of supraglacial meltwater lakes. Our investigation into the transmission length-scale of a tidal load represents the first study to explore the daily tidal influence on ice stream motion using three-dimensional models. Our results demonstrate both that the implicit assumptions made in the standard two-dimensional flow-line models are inherently incorrect for many ice streams, and that the anomalously large spatial extent of the tidal influence seen on the motion of some glaciers cannot be explained, as previously thought, through the elastic or viscoelastic transmission of tidal loads through the bulk of the ice stream. We then discuss how the phase delay between a tidal forcing and the ice stream’s displacement response can be used to constrain in situ viscoelastic properties of glacial ice. Lastly, for the problem of supraglacial lake drainage, we present a methodology for implementing linear viscoelasticity into an existing model for lake drainage. Our work finds that viscoelasticity is a second-order effect when trying to model the deformation of ice in response to a meltwater lake draining to a glacier’s bed. The research in this thesis demonstrates that the first-order understanding of the short-timescale behavior of naturally occurring ice is incomplete, and works towards improving our fundamental understanding of ice behavior over the range of hours to days. |
format |
Thesis |
author |
Thompson, Jeffrey Muir |
author_facet |
Thompson, Jeffrey Muir |
author_sort |
Thompson, Jeffrey Muir |
title |
The Short-Timescale Behavior of Glacial Ice |
title_short |
The Short-Timescale Behavior of Glacial Ice |
title_full |
The Short-Timescale Behavior of Glacial Ice |
title_fullStr |
The Short-Timescale Behavior of Glacial Ice |
title_full_unstemmed |
The Short-Timescale Behavior of Glacial Ice |
title_sort |
short-timescale behavior of glacial ice |
publisher |
California Institute of Technology |
publishDate |
2013 |
url |
https://dx.doi.org/10.7907/5bv8-9j47 https://resolver.caltech.edu/CaltechTHESIS:06062013-094032857 |
geographic |
Greenland |
geographic_facet |
Greenland |
genre |
Antarc* Antarctica Greenland |
genre_facet |
Antarc* Antarctica Greenland |
op_rights |
No commercial reproduction, distribution, display or performance rights in this work are provided. |
op_doi |
https://doi.org/10.7907/5bv8-9j47 |
_version_ |
1766272603639513088 |