Subglacial topography and geothermal heat flux: potential interactions with drainage of the Greenland ice sheet
Issue Date
2007-06-05Author
van der Veen, Cornelis J.
Leftwich, T.
von Frese, R.
Csatho, Bea M.
Li, Jilu
Publisher
American Geophysical Union
Type
Article
Article Version
Scholarly/refereed, publisher version
Metadata
Show full item recordAbstract
[1] Many of the outlet glaciers in Greenland overlie deep and narrow trenches cut into the bedrock. It is well known that pronounced topography intensifies the geothermal heat flux in deep valleys and attenuates this flux on mountains. Here we investigate the magnitude of this effect for two subglacial trenches in Greenland. Heat flux variations are estimated for idealized geometries using solutions for plane slopes derived by Lachenbruch (1968). It is found that for channels such as the one under Jakobshavn Isbræ, topographic effects may increase the local geothermal heat flux by as much as 100%.
Description
This is the published version, also available here: http://dx.doi.org/10.1029/2007GL030046.
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Citation
van der Veen, C. J., T. Leftwich, R. von Frese, B. M. Csatho, and J. Li (2007), Subglacial topography and geothermal heat flux: Potential interactions with drainage of the Greenland ice sheet, Geophys. Res. Lett., 34, L12501, http://dx.doi.org/10.1029/2007GL030046.
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