HR: 1455h
AN: C53A-06 INVITED    [Abstracts]
TI: More About R Channels
AU: * Clarke, G K
EM: clarke@eos.ubc.ca
AF: University of British Columbia, Earth and Ocean Sciences, 6339 Stores Road, Vancouver, BC V6T 1Z4, Canada
AB: Much of our understanding of how subglacial drainage systems operate is based on key papers by Röthlisberger and Shreve that describe the steady-state hydraulics of circular ice-walled water conduits. Subsequent studies have extended these results to include transient conditions---relevant to diurnally- and seasonally-forced drainage systems---and to semi-circular bed-floored channels. In passing from circular to semi-circular conduits it is usual to adopt Nye's creep closure expression for circular tunnels and to assume that creep closure proceeds as it would for a circular ice-walled conduit. This assumption is only valid if ice can slip freely over the subglacial bed and it completely breaks down if free sliding is inhibited. Even for glaciers and ice streams that are sliding at fast rates the frictional resistance to conduit closure can be substantial and it is therefore impossible to maintain a semi-circular channel in a steady-state. The resulting difference between the rate of creep closure at the conduit ceiling and at the sidewalls forces the cross-sectional geometry of the conduit to evolve. At the time of writing it is unclear whether or not non-circular steady-state geometries can exist but either possibility is interesting. If there is no steady-state geometry then subglacial conduits must necessarily operate in an episodic manner. If steady-state geometries do exist then steady-state subglacial conduits must manifest along-path variations in their height-to-width aspect ratio in response to along-path changes in effective pressure and viscous dissipation.
DE: 0720 Glaciers
DE: 0726 Ice sheets
DE: 0776 Glaciology (1621, 1827, 1863)
DE: 0798 Modeling
SC: Cryosphere [C]
MN: 2007 Fall Meeting