Improvements on the discretisation of boundary conditions to the momentum balance for glacial ice

Abstract

The flow of glacial ice is typically approximated as a non-Newtonian viscous fluid, with the momentum balance described by (an approximation to) the Stokes equations, and the non-linear rheology described by a flow law. The most commonly used rheological law for glacial ice, Glen's flow law, yields infinite viscosity in the case of zero deformation, which can be the case at the ice surface. This poses a problem when solving the momentum balance numerically. We show that two commonly-used discretisation schemes for the boundary conditions at the ice surface and base, which yield proper numerical convergence when applied to simpler problems, produce poor numerical convergence and large errors, when used to solve the momentum balance with Glen's flow law. We show that a discretisation scheme based on the concept of ghost nodes, which substitutes the boundary conditions directly into the momentum balance equations, yields second-order numerical convergence and errors that can be up to four orders of magnitude smaller. These results are robust across different momentum balance approximations. We show that the improved boundary conditions are particularly useful for solving the 3-D higher-order Blatter-Pattyn Approximation (BPA). In general, this work underlines the importance of thoroughly verifying the numerical solvers used in ice-sheet models, before applying them to future projections of ice-sheet mass loss.