Laboratory-Based Scaling Laws for Ice Shelf Evolution

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This award provides support for "Laboratory-Based Laws for Ice Shelf Evolution" from the Antarctic Integrated System Science within the Office of Polar Programs. Studies investigating the dynamics of ice shelves are arguably one of the most, if not the most, important area of research if we hope to make reliable predictions about future global sea-level rise. The dominant mass loss in Antarctic ice shelves occurs in one of two ways: either via basal melt where the ocean interacts with the bottom of the ice shelf, or via calving of icebergs. This award will include studies of both these processes.Intellectual Merit: The project will use laboratory and modeling studies to better understand the processes associated with basal melt beneath the ice sheets (ice-ocean interactions) and fracturing leading to calving of icebergs. Specifically the investigator will perform a suite of experiments in cold rooms available at CRREL (Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory) facilities in New Hampshire. In conjunction with the scale-model ice shelf laboratory studies, the team will use DNS (direct numerical simulation) to model the processes. While others have done scale-model studies, such investigations are rarely (if ever) coupled with numerical modeling. Combining the two is novel, and should lead to important new insights into ice shelf dynamics. One significant challenge will be to ?scale-up? laboratory results to processes relevant to the real world- hence the proposed work is very much proof of concept and appropriate for EAGER funding.Broader Impacts: An understanding of the dynamics controlling the loss of mass from ice shelves is critically important to understanding the future of global sea-level change. The results will be communicated to both the glaciology and modeling community. The project will train one graduate student and promote interactions between CRREL (a federal lab) and NYU (an academic institution).