| Summary: | Finding suitable potential sites for an undisturbed record of million-year old ice in Antarctica requires slow-moving ice (preferably an ice divide) and basal conditions that are not disturbed by large topographic variations. Furthermore, ice should be thick and cold basal conditions should prevail, since basal melting would destroy the bottom layers. Therefore, ice-flow conditions and thermodynamic characteristics are crucial in identifying potential locations of undisturbed ice. Van Liefferinge and Pattyn (2013) identified suitable areas based on a pan-Antarctic simplified thermodynamic ice sheet model. In order to refine these estimates and potential location sites, we limited our analysis to the divide area of the East Antarctic ice sheet, i.e. Dome Fuji, Argus, Concordia, and Ridge B. The refined calculations are with a full thermo-mechanically coupled higher-order ice sheet model (Pattyn, 2003; Pattyn et al. 2004). Initial conditions for the calculations are based on an inversion of basal slipperiness, based on observed surface topography (Pollard and Deconto, 2012; Pattyn, in prep.). Uncertainty in geothermal conditions is introduced with the methodology previously applied (Pattyn, 2010; Van Liefferinge and Pattyn, 2013). The higher-order model approach has major advantages over previous approaches, as the calculated flow field is dynamically coupled to the thermal balance, which was not the case previously. info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished
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