Constraints on the lake volume required for hydro-fracture through ice sheets
Author Posting. © American Geophysical Union, 2009. This article is posted here by permission of American Geophysical Union for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Geophysical Research Letters 36 (2009): L10501, doi:10.1029/2008GL036765. Water-filled cracks...
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ftwhoas:oai:darchive.mblwhoilibrary.org:1912/3378 2023-05-15T15:09:52+02:00 Constraints on the lake volume required for hydro-fracture through ice sheets Krawczynski, Michael J. Behn, Mark D. Das, Sarah B. Joughin, Ian 2009-05-16 application/pdf text/plain application/postscript application/x-tex https://hdl.handle.net/1912/3378 en_US eng American Geophysical Union https://doi.org/10.1029/2008GL036765 Geophysical Research Letters 36 (2009): L10501 https://hdl.handle.net/1912/3378 doi:10.1029/2008GL036765 Geophysical Research Letters 36 (2009): L10501 doi:10.1029/2008GL036765 Supraglacial lakes Greenland Hydrofracture Article 2009 ftwhoas https://doi.org/10.1029/2008GL036765 2022-05-28T22:57:55Z Author Posting. © American Geophysical Union, 2009. This article is posted here by permission of American Geophysical Union for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Geophysical Research Letters 36 (2009): L10501, doi:10.1029/2008GL036765. Water-filled cracks are an effective mechanism to drive hydro-fractures through thick ice sheets. Crack geometry is therefore critical in assessing whether a supraglacial lake contains a sufficient volume of water to keep a crack water-filled until it reaches the bed. In this study, we investigate fracture propagation using a linear elastic fracture mechanics model to calculate the dimensions of water-filled cracks beneath supraglacial lakes. We find that the cross-sectional area of water-filled cracks increases non-linearly with ice sheet thickness. Using these results, we place volumetric constraints on the amount of water necessary to drive cracks through ∼1 km of sub-freezing ice. For ice sheet regions under little tension, lakes larger than 0.25–0.80 km in diameter contain sufficient water to rapidly drive hydro-fractures through 1–1.5 km of subfreezing ice. This represents ∼98% of the meltwater volume held in supraglacial lakes in the central western margin of the Greenland Ice Sheet. Support for this research was provided by NSF and NASA (through ARC-0520077, ARC- 0531345, and ARC-520382) and by the Joint Initiative Awards Fund from the Andrew Mellon Foundation, and the WHOI Ocean and Climate Change Institute and Clark Arctic Research Initiative. Article in Journal/Newspaper Arctic Climate change Greenland Ice Sheet Woods Hole Scientific Community: WHOAS (Woods Hole Open Access Server) Arctic Greenland Geophysical Research Letters 36 10 |
institution |
Open Polar |
collection |
Woods Hole Scientific Community: WHOAS (Woods Hole Open Access Server) |
op_collection_id |
ftwhoas |
language |
English |
topic |
Supraglacial lakes Greenland Hydrofracture |
spellingShingle |
Supraglacial lakes Greenland Hydrofracture Krawczynski, Michael J. Behn, Mark D. Das, Sarah B. Joughin, Ian Constraints on the lake volume required for hydro-fracture through ice sheets |
topic_facet |
Supraglacial lakes Greenland Hydrofracture |
description |
Author Posting. © American Geophysical Union, 2009. This article is posted here by permission of American Geophysical Union for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Geophysical Research Letters 36 (2009): L10501, doi:10.1029/2008GL036765. Water-filled cracks are an effective mechanism to drive hydro-fractures through thick ice sheets. Crack geometry is therefore critical in assessing whether a supraglacial lake contains a sufficient volume of water to keep a crack water-filled until it reaches the bed. In this study, we investigate fracture propagation using a linear elastic fracture mechanics model to calculate the dimensions of water-filled cracks beneath supraglacial lakes. We find that the cross-sectional area of water-filled cracks increases non-linearly with ice sheet thickness. Using these results, we place volumetric constraints on the amount of water necessary to drive cracks through ∼1 km of sub-freezing ice. For ice sheet regions under little tension, lakes larger than 0.25–0.80 km in diameter contain sufficient water to rapidly drive hydro-fractures through 1–1.5 km of subfreezing ice. This represents ∼98% of the meltwater volume held in supraglacial lakes in the central western margin of the Greenland Ice Sheet. Support for this research was provided by NSF and NASA (through ARC-0520077, ARC- 0531345, and ARC-520382) and by the Joint Initiative Awards Fund from the Andrew Mellon Foundation, and the WHOI Ocean and Climate Change Institute and Clark Arctic Research Initiative. |
format |
Article in Journal/Newspaper |
author |
Krawczynski, Michael J. Behn, Mark D. Das, Sarah B. Joughin, Ian |
author_facet |
Krawczynski, Michael J. Behn, Mark D. Das, Sarah B. Joughin, Ian |
author_sort |
Krawczynski, Michael J. |
title |
Constraints on the lake volume required for hydro-fracture through ice sheets |
title_short |
Constraints on the lake volume required for hydro-fracture through ice sheets |
title_full |
Constraints on the lake volume required for hydro-fracture through ice sheets |
title_fullStr |
Constraints on the lake volume required for hydro-fracture through ice sheets |
title_full_unstemmed |
Constraints on the lake volume required for hydro-fracture through ice sheets |
title_sort |
constraints on the lake volume required for hydro-fracture through ice sheets |
publisher |
American Geophysical Union |
publishDate |
2009 |
url |
https://hdl.handle.net/1912/3378 |
geographic |
Arctic Greenland |
geographic_facet |
Arctic Greenland |
genre |
Arctic Climate change Greenland Ice Sheet |
genre_facet |
Arctic Climate change Greenland Ice Sheet |
op_source |
Geophysical Research Letters 36 (2009): L10501 doi:10.1029/2008GL036765 |
op_relation |
https://doi.org/10.1029/2008GL036765 Geophysical Research Letters 36 (2009): L10501 https://hdl.handle.net/1912/3378 doi:10.1029/2008GL036765 |
op_doi |
https://doi.org/10.1029/2008GL036765 |
container_title |
Geophysical Research Letters |
container_volume |
36 |
container_issue |
10 |
_version_ |
1766340975098068992 |