Iterative improvement of the shallow-ice approximation

• Published in: Journal of Glaciology
• Main Authors: Soucek, O., Martinec, Z.
• Other Authors: 1.3 Earth System Modelling, 1.0 Geodesy and Remote Sensing, Departments, GFZ Publication Database, Deutsches GeoForschungsZentrum
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: unknown
• Published: 2008
• Subjects: 550 - Earth sciences; Journal of Glaciology
• Online Access: https://gfzpublic.gfz-potsdam.de/pubman/item/item_237995

We present a new algorithm for a fast iterative improvement of the shallow-ice approximation (SIA) for the modeling of glacier flow. Based on the traditional SIA scaling assumptions, the solution of the Stokes problem is found by an operator-splitting iterative technique. The SIA solution obtained in the first step is successively improved to obtain a higher-order pproximation. Each iterative step has computational demands comparable to solving the SIA, which makes the algorithm substantially faster than other higher-order or full-Stokes solvers. The performance of the algorithm is tested on a model example taken from the ISMIP-HOM intercomparison project.