VARIATIONS OF GLACIERS

Transient effective stress variations forced by changes in conduit pressure beneath glaciers and ice sheets

The resistance to sliding beneath soft-bedded glaciers depends on the effective stress, N, which is controlled by the subglacial hydrological system. While large-scale water transport is primarily through conduits, the effective stress profile beneath most of the glacier base is expected to be controlled by seepage flows through the permeable sediments. Models of the response to forced changes ...

Flow and Fluctuations of Glaciers

Reconstructing Climate from Glaciers

Glaciers offer the potential to reconstruct past climate over timescales from decades to millennia. They are found on nearly every continent, and at the Last Glacial Maximum, glaciers were larger in all regions on Earth. The physics of glacier-climate interaction are relatively well understood, and glacier models can be used to reconstruct past climate from geological evidence of past glacier e...

Seasonal waves on glaciers

Seasonal waves accompanying annual changes in the sliding velocity of ice travel down glacier at speeds much faster than the ice itself. A simple explanation for these waves in terms of the passage of a pressure wave through the subglacial drainage system is given. Drainage by both distributed and localized systems is explored, with the sliding velocity governed by a dependence on the effective...

Modelling Dynamics of Valley Glaciers