Abstract
Antarctic ice shelves are losing mass at increasing rates, yet the ice-ocean interactions that cause significant ice loss are not well understood. A new approach of high-resolution phase-change simulations is used to model vertical ice melting into a stratified ocean. The ocean dynamics show complicated interplay between a turbulent buoyant meltwater plume and double-diffusive layers, while the ice actively melts and changes topography. At room temperatures, the double-diffusive layer thickness is closely linked to ice scalloping. At lower, more realistic ocean temperatures, the meltwater plume becomes prominent with a laminar-to-turbulent transition imprinting an indent on the melting ice. The double-diffusive layer thickness is consistent with scaling prediction, while the real-world application demonstrates reasonably good matching of the scaling prediction for some Antarctic regions. Our study is a key first step toward the future use of high-resolution phase-change fluid dynamics simulations to better understand Antarctic ice shelves in a changing climate.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Article number | e2023GL104396 |
| Journal | Geophysical Research Letters |
| Volume | 50 |
| Issue number | 17 |
| Early online date | 29 Aug 2023 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 16 Sept 2023 |
Data Availability Statement
The Dedalus solver (version 2) was used for all the numerical simulations. The Dedalus solver is developed openly and available at http://dedalus-project.org. Model output is preserved at https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.8175219Acknowledgements
We thank the two reviewers for their helpful comments that have greatly improved this paper.Funding
This research was supported by the Australian Research Council (ARC) Australian Centre for Excellence in Antarctic Science and by the Research Computing Services NCI Access scheme at the University of Melbourne. B.G. was supported by ARC Future Fellowship Grant FT180100037. C.V. was supported by ARC DECRA Fellowship Grant DE220101027. Numerical simulations were conducted on the Australian National Computational Infrastructure. Open access publishing facilitated by The University of Melbourne, as part of the Wiley - The University of Melbourne agreement via the Council of Australian University Librarians.
