Dynamically coupling full Stokes and shallow shelf approximation for marine ice sheet flow using Elmer/Ice (v8.3)

van Dongen, Eef C. H.; Kirchner, Nina; van Gijzen, Martin B.; van de Wal, Roderik S. W.; Zwinger, Thomas; Cheng, Gong; Lötstedt, Per; von Sydow, Lina

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-11-4563-2018

Articles | Volume 11, issue 11

https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-11-4563-2018

© Author(s) 2018. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-11-4563-2018

© Author(s) 2018. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 11, issue 11

Development and technical paper

|

16 Nov 2018

Development and technical paper |

| 16 Nov 2018

Dynamically coupling full Stokes and shallow shelf approximation for marine ice sheet flow using Elmer/Ice (v8.3)

Eef C. H. van Dongen, Nina Kirchner, Martin B. van Gijzen, Roderik S. W. van de Wal, Thomas Zwinger, Gong Cheng, Per Lötstedt, and Lina von Sydow

Model code and software

FS-SSA coupling in Elmer/Ice E. van Dongen, T. Zwinger, and G. Cheng https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.1202407

Short summary

Ice flow forced by gravity is governed by the full Stokes (FS) equations, which are computationally expensive to solve. Therefore, approximations to the FS equations are used, especially when modeling an ice sheet on long time spans. Here, we report a combination of an approximation with the FS equations that allows simulating the dynamics of ice sheets over long time spans without introducing artifacts caused by application of approximations in parts of the domain where they are not valid.