Coupling approximation levels for modeling for ice sheet and shelf
systems
Eef van Dongen
Supervisor: Martin van Gijzen
Site of the project:
Stockholm University
Department of Physical Geography
Sweden
Daily supervisor Stockholm University: Nina Kirchner
start of the project: September 2016
The Master project has been finished in July 2017
by the completion of the
Masters Thesis
and a final
presentation
has been given.
For working address etc. we refer to our
alumnipage.
Summary of the master project:
Ice sheets such as Greenland and Antarctica consist of both grounded ice
and floating ice, the latter called ice shelves. The aim of the research
project is to extend the ISCAL (Ice Sheet Coupled Approximation Levels)
method, as described in (J. Ahlkrona et al. 2015), that combines the
non-linear incompressible Navier Stokes equations (NS) with the zeroth
order Shallow Ice Approximation (SIA).
First, the method itself needs to
be improved since it has shown to be instable for realistic, detailed
bed topographies. The final goal is to extend the method to model ice
shelves with the Shallow Shelf Approximation (SSA). The part of the
domain where the SSA is applied should be determined automatically and
dynamically based on estimates of the modelling error, as is done with
the SIA by J. Ahlkrona.
With the implementation of the SSA, we aim to
compute the solution substantially faster with a low reduction in
accuracy compared to solving the full non-linear Navier Stokes
equations, which makes this method suitable for simulations over a very
long time span (~100.000 years).
Finally, the extended ISCAL method can
be applied to conceptual model problems and possibly the former
Svalbard/Barents Sea Ice Sheet.
The extension will be implemented in the finite element software
Elmer/Ice.
Contact information:
Kees
Vuik
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