TY - JOUR
T1 - Access of surface meltwater to beds of sub-freezing glaciers
T2 - Preliminary insights
AU - Alley, Richard B.
AU - Dupont, Todd K.
AU - Parizek, Byron R.
AU - Anandakrishnan, Sridhar
N1 - Copyright:
Copyright 2009 Elsevier B.V., All rights reserved.
PY - 2005
Y1 - 2005
N2 - Sufficiently deep water-filled fractures can penetrate even cold ice-sheet ice, but glaciogenic stresses are typically smaller than needed to propagate water-filled fractures that are less than a few tens of meters deep, as shown by our simplified analytical treatment based on analogous models of magmatic processes. However, water-filled fractures are inferred to reach the bed of Greenland through >1 km of ice and then collapse to form moulins, which are observed. Supraglacial lakes appear especially important among possible crack 'nucleation' mechanisms, because lakes can warm ice, supply water, and increase the pressure driving water flow and ice cracking.
AB - Sufficiently deep water-filled fractures can penetrate even cold ice-sheet ice, but glaciogenic stresses are typically smaller than needed to propagate water-filled fractures that are less than a few tens of meters deep, as shown by our simplified analytical treatment based on analogous models of magmatic processes. However, water-filled fractures are inferred to reach the bed of Greenland through >1 km of ice and then collapse to form moulins, which are observed. Supraglacial lakes appear especially important among possible crack 'nucleation' mechanisms, because lakes can warm ice, supply water, and increase the pressure driving water flow and ice cracking.
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U2 - 10.3189/172756405781813483
DO - 10.3189/172756405781813483
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:30944444346
SN - 0260-3055
VL - 40
SP - 8
EP - 14
JO - Annals of Glaciology
JF - Annals of Glaciology
ER -