Slip Slidin' Away: Glaciers and Ice Sheets in a changing climate

Dr. Sridhar Anandakrishnan, Department of Geoscience, Pennsylvania State University

Glaciers are made up of ice that flows under its own weight. Glaciers flow in two main ways: one is internal deformation where the body of the glacier deforms and ice flows relatively slowly. The other is glacier sliding where the ice slides on a layer of water and water-saturated sediments. Our understanding of the glacier-sliding mode of ice flow is incomplete. Recent results suggest that supraglacial lakes draining to the bed of the Greenland Ice Sheet contribute to speedup of the ice flow. In addition, ocean warming leads to increased melt of floating ice shelves. The loss of these ice shelves also leads to speedup of the ice flow. My research is related to the conditions at the base of the ice sheet and attempts to better model these interactions of water and ice flow.