Ice viscosity is more sensitive to stress than commonly assumed

Abstract

Accurate representation of the viscous flow of ice is fundamental to understanding glacier dynamics and projecting sea-level rise. Ice viscosity is often described by a simple but largely untested and uncalibrated constitutive relation, Glen’s Flow Law, wherein the rate of deformation is proportional to stress raised to the power n. The value n = 3 is commonly prescribed in ice-flow models, though observations and experiments support a range of values across stresses and temperatures found on Earth. Here, we leverage recent remotely-sensed observations of Antarctic ice shelves to show that Glen’s Flow Law approximates the viscous flow of ice with n = 4.1 ± 0.4 in fast-flowing areas. The viscosity and flow rate of ice are therefore more sensitive to changes in stress than most ice-flow models allow. By calibrating the governing equation of ice deformation, our result is a pathway towards improving projections of future glacier change.

Metadata

Item Type:	Article
Authors/Creators:	Millstein, J.D. Minchew, B.M. Pegler, S.S. https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8373-2693
Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information:	© The Author(s) 2022. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/ licenses/by/4.0/.
Dates:	Published: 10 March 2022 Published (online): 10 March 2022 Accepted: 10 February 2022
Institution:	The University of Leeds
Academic Units:	The University of Leeds > Faculty of Engineering & Physical Sciences (Leeds) > School of Mathematics (Leeds) > Applied Mathematics (Leeds)
Depositing User:	Symplectic Publications
Date Deposited:	30 Jan 2025 13:48
Last Modified:	30 Jan 2025 13:48
Published Version:	https://www.nature.com/articles/s43247-022-00385-x
Status:	Published
Publisher:	Springer Nature
Identification Number:	10.1038/s43247-022-00385-x
Related URLs:	Author Software or Code
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID):	oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:222594

Download

Published Version

Filename: s43247-022-00385-x.pdf

Licence: CC-BY 4.0

CLICK TO DOWNLOAD

CORE (COnnecting REpositories)

Ice viscosity is more sensitive to stress than commonly assumed

Abstract

Metadata

Download

Published Version

Export

Statistics