On the Structure of the Ice-Shelf-Ocean Boundary Layer and Current

Abstract:

Ocean-forced basal melting has been implicated in the widespread thinning of Antarctic ice shelves that has been causally linked with acceleration in the outflow of grounded ice. What determines the distribution and rates of basal melting and freezing beneath an ice shelf and how these respond to changes in the ocean temperature or circulation are therefore key questions.

Recent years have seen major progress in our ability to observe basal melting and the ocean conditions that drive it, but data on the latter remain sparse, limiting our understanding of the key processes of ice-ocean heat transfer. In particular, we have no observations of current profiles through the buoyancy- and frictionally-controlled flows along the ice shelf base that drive mixing through the ice-ocean boundary layer. This presentation represents an attempt to address this gap in our knowledge through the application of a very simple model of such boundary flows that considers only the spatial dimension perpendicular to the boundary.

Results indicate that for the purely buoyancy-driven flow two possible regimes exist: a weakly-stratified, geostrophic cross-slope current with an embedded Ekman layer; or a strongly-stratified upslope jet with weak cross-slope flow. The latter regime, while well-known to students of katabatic winds, has no analogue in the ocean, and is most appropriate when the ice-ocean interface is very steep. For the gentle slopes typical of ice shelves the buoyant Ekman regime provides some useful insight. When combined with a background flow a range of possible near-ice current profiles emerges as a result of arrest or enhancement of the upslope Ekman transport. Furthermore a simple expression for the upslope transport can be formed that is analogous to that for the wind-forced surface Ekman layer, with the curvature of the ice shelf base replacing the wind-stress curl in driving Ekman pumping to and from the geostrophic flow.