Antarctic Subglacial Lake Drainage Via Canals Incised into Sediment: What our Models and Obsevations Imply for Linking Lake observations Pridicting Ice Flow

Abstract:

Traditional models for the subglacial drainage of ice-dammed lakes in temperate environments invoke a channel eroded into the deformable ice above the bed. In Antarctica, however, modelling studies imply that conditions are more favourable to the drainage of water through channels eroded into the underlying sediments or till, commonly referred to as “canals”. We have developed a model for the discharge of “active” subglacial lakes in Antarctica employing drainage through canals and tested its predictions for ice surface drawdown and rate of outflow against satellite- and ground-based observations. Our modeled outflow from a lake begins as a distributed flow, which evolves to incise a channel into the sediment as outflow rates increase. With further erosion, the canal aperture increases and soon quickly become the dominant flow mechanism, pulling water away from the distributed system. Lower pressure within the canal allows the lake to drain to levels below that necessary to initiate outflow, but also allows the sediment to flow into the canal. This deformational closure of the canal typically, ends lake drainage before all water is evacuated. The observed ice speedups associated with lake drainage appear to correlate not with peak total outflow, but with the peak in distributed outflow that before an effective channel is incised. Peak channelized flow reduces water pressure leading to a net slowdown relative to a steady-state distributed drainage. Although sensitivity studies indicate that rate of channel grown and contraction are highly dependent on relatively unconstrained sediment properties (e.g. grain size, porosity), the total drawdown and peak outflow rates for nearly every active lake identified in Antarctica so far all fall within 2 orders of magnitude of one another. The small spread of observations compared to the parameter space of the sensitivity study may indicate either that there is a feedback mechanism for maintaining optimal sediment properties, or that lake drainage as inferred is indicative of a specific type of subglacial environment. We explore how these findings apply a number of lake districts throughout Antarctica.