A simple parametrization of mélange buttressing for calving glaciers

• Published in: The Cryosphere
• Main Authors: T. Schlemm, A. Levermann
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: Copernicus Publications 2021
• Subjects: geo; envir; Greenland; Antarc*; Antarctica; glacier; Sea ice; The Cryosphere
• Online Access: https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-15-531-2021; https://tc.copernicus.org/articles/15/531/2021/tc-15-531-2021.pdf; https://doaj.org/article/1e7f84cd829c42a9aa7dbde09a685290

Both ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica are discharging ice into the ocean. In many regions along the coast of the ice sheets, the icebergs calve into a bay. If the addition of icebergs through calving is faster than their transport out of the embayment, the icebergs will be frozen into a mélange with surrounding sea ice in winter. In this case, the buttressing effect of the ice mélange can be considerably stronger than any buttressing by mere sea ice would be. This in turn stabilizes the glacier terminus and leads to a reduction in calving rates. Here we propose a simple parametrization of ice mélange buttressing which leads to an upper bound on calving rates and can be used in numerical and analytical modelling.