A modified viscous flow law for natural glacier ice: Scaling from laboratories to ice sheets
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ranganathan-minchew-2024-a-modified-viscous-flow-law-for-natural-glacier-ice-scaling-from-laboratories-to-ice-sheets.pdf
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10.09 MB
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Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
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Author(s)
Ranganathan, Meghana
Minchew, Brent
Date Issued
May 30, 2024
Publisher
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
Citation
Ranganathan, Meghana and Minchew, Brent. 2024. "A modified viscous flow law for natural glacier ice: Scaling from laboratories to ice sheets." 121 (23).
Version
Final published version
Abstract
Glacier flow modulates sea level and is governed largely by the viscous deformation of ice. Multiple molecular-scale mechanisms facilitate viscous deformation, but it remains unclear how each contributes to glacier-scale deformation. Here, we present a model of ice deformation that bridges laboratory and glacier scales, unifies existing estimates of the viscous parameters, and provides a framework for estimating the parameters from observations and incorporating flow laws derived from laboratory observations into glacier-flow models. Our results yield a map of the dominant deformation mechanisms in the Antarctic Ice Sheet, showing that, contrary to long-standing assumptions, dislocation creep, characterized by a value of the stress exponent, likely dominates in all fast-flowing areas. This increase from the canonical value of dramatically alters the climate conditions under which marine ice sheets may become unstable and drive rapid rates of sea-level rise.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences
Terms of Use
Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License
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DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2309788121
