Velocity, Stress and Temperature Solutions for Rectilinear Glacier Flows with Sliding at the Bed

Abstract

Summary A flexible new method for iteratively solving the equations of rectilinear glacier flow is used to compute solutions for non-isothermal flow with viscous heat generation (a polar glacier), and isothermal flow with stressdependent sliding velocity (a temperate glacier). Weertman's simple sliding theory provides the shear stress-velocity relationship from which the sliding boundary condition is derived. Although the present glacier models have rectangular cross-sections, the solution procedure should generalize to allow more realistic shapes.