Hydraulic Conductivity as a Proxy for Drainage System Connectivity in a Subglacial Hydrology Model

• Main Author: Downs, Jacob Z
• Format: Thesis
• Language: unknown
• Published: University of Montana 2016
• Subjects: subglacial; hydrology; hydraulic; conductivity; glaciology; modeling; Numerical Analysis and Scientific Computing; Greenland; Ice Sheet
• Online Access: https://scholarworks.umt.edu/etd/10877; https://scholarworks.umt.edu/context/etd/article/11923/viewcontent/Downs_Jacob_Thesis.pdf

The link between subglacial hydrology and basal sliding has prompted work on basal hydrology models with water pressure and storage as prognostic variables. We find that a commonly used model of distributed drainage through linked cavities underpredicts winter water pressure when compared to borehole observations from Issunguata Sermia in Western Central Greenland. Possible causes for this discrepancy including unrealistic model inputs or unconstrained parameters are investigated through a series of modeling experiments on both synthetic and realistic ice sheet geometries. We find that conductivity acts as a proxy for the connectivity of the linked cavity system and should therefore change seasonally. Model experiments also suggest that trends in winter sliding velocity are more closely related to winter water storage rather than pressure.