The Heat Budget of the Ross Drainage Basin

Abstract

Integration of the thermodynamic equation over an entire drainage basin yields a fairly simple expression for the steady-state heat balance. This stems from the fact that dissipative heating can be calculated directly from the release of gravitational energy. When mass balance, surface temperature and geothermal input are known, the mean ice temperature at the grounding line can be obtained as a residual.The procedure is applied to the drainage basin feeding the Ross Ice Shelf. The resulting mean outlet temperature is -16.2 oC. The heating rates making the balance turn out to be (in 0.0001 K/yr): dissipation 8.2, advective flux divergence -13.5 and geothermal heating 5.3. The method also reveals how the mean outlet temperature depends on mass balance, surface elevation, etc.

Quantifying uncertainty in using multiple datasets to determine spatiotemporal ice mass loss over 101 years at kårsaglaciären, sub‐arctic sweden

“…)—improved knowledge of these uncertainties is therefore important for improving estimates of volume change. Geodetic ice mass loss calculations for individual glaciers are distorted and spatially limited where surface interpolations are based on sparse point networks (Førland and Hanssen‐Bauer ; Barrand et al . ). Knowledge of geometric, topographic and climatic factors specific to individual glaciers is required to understand and more accurately account for local glacier change (Oerlemans ; Granshaw and Fountain ; Salinger et al . ).…”

“…Knowledge of geometric, topographic and climatic factors specific to individual glaciers is required to understand and more accurately account for local glacier change (Oerlemans ; Granshaw and Fountain ; Salinger et al . ).…”

“…3. Knowledge of geometric, topographic and climatic factors specific to individual glaciers is required to understand and more accurately account for local glacier change (Oerlemans 1987;Granshaw and Fountain 2006;Salinger et al 2008). Neglecting these factors can result in highly erroneous melt and resultant sealevel rise estimates (Barrand et al 2010).…”