Heat Conduction in Thinning Ice Sheets

Abstract

A numerical treatment of the heat conduction in ice sheets subject to vertical shrinking, geothermal and frictional heating from below, and surface accumulation or ablation, is outlined and illustrated with results computed for an arbitrary ice thickness profile. The movement of the ice is found to increase its basal temperature when the ice is thick, and to decrease it in the fringe zone where the ice becomes thin. The treatment seems capable of extension to cover both the thermal and dynamic aspects of ice motion.