Regularized Coulomb Friction Laws for Ice Sheet Sliding: Application to Pine Island Glacier, Antarctica.

ABSTRACT: The choice of the best basal friction law to use in ice-sheet models remains a source of uncertainty in projections of sea level. The parameters in commonly used friction laws can produce a broad range of behavior and are poorly constrained. Here we use a time series of elevation and speed data to examine the simulated transient response of Pine Island Glacier, Antarctica, to a loss of basal traction as its grounding line retreats. We evaluate a variety of friction laws, which produces a diversity of responses, to determine which best reproduces the observed speedup when forced with the observed thinning. Forms of the commonly used power law friction provide much larger model-data disagreement than less commonly used regularized Coulomb friction in which cavitation effects yield an upper b

SUBMITTER: Joughin I 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6582595 | biostudies-literature | 2019 May

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature