A short history of the thermomechanical theory and modelling of glaciers and ice sheets

• Published in: Journal of Glaciology
• Main Authors: Blatter, Heinz, Greve, Ralf, Abe-Ouchi, Ayako
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: International Glaciological Society
• Subjects: 452; Ice Sheet; Journal of Glaciology
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/2115/46879; https://doi.org/10.3189/002214311796406059

Observations of glacier flow and explanations of its origin started as early as the 18th century. Several mechanisms were suggested before gravity-driven viscous flow became the accepted theory of glacier flow in the 1950s, the early years of the Journal of Glaciology. Since the viscosity of ice is strongly temperature-dependent, the topic of glacier and ice-sheet dynamics became essentially a fluid-dynamical problem. The availability of growing computing power turned the field of glacier mechanics and thermodynamics into a field of numerical modelling with increasing sophistication.