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A Parallel Computational Model for Three-Dimensional, Thermo-Mechanical Stokes Flow Simulations of Glaciers and Ice Sheets

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 June 2015

Wei Leng ,
Lili Ju ,
Max Gunzburger  and
Stephen Price
Wei Leng*
Affiliation:
State Key Laboratory of Scientific and Engineering Computing, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100190, China
Lili Ju*
Affiliation:
Department of Mathematics, University of South Carolina, Columbia, SC 29208, USA
Max Gunzburger*
Affiliation:
Department of Scientific Computing, Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL 32306, USA
Stephen Price*
Affiliation:
Theoretical Division, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, NM 87545, USA
*
Email:wleng@lsec.cc.ac.cn
Corresponding author.Email:ju@math.sc.edu
Email:mgunzburger@fsu.edu
Email:sprice@lanl.gov
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Abstract

This paper focuses on the development of an efficient, three-dimensional, thermo-mechanical, nonlinear-Stokes flow computational model for ice sheet simulation. The model is based on the parallel finite element model developed in [14] which features high-order accurate finite element discretizations on variable resolution grids. Here, we add an improved iterative solution method for treating the nonlinearity of the Stokes problem, a new high-order accurate finite element solver for the temperature equation, and a new conservative finite volume solver for handling mass conservation. The result is an accurate and efficient numerical model for thermo-mechanical glacier and ice-sheet simulations. We demonstrate the improved efficiency of the Stokes solver using the ISMIP-HOM Benchmark experiments and a realistic test case for the Greenland ice-sheet. We also apply our model to the EISMINT-II benchmark experiments and demonstrate stable thermo-mechanical ice sheet evolution on both structured and unstructured meshes. Notably, we find no evidence for the “cold spoke” instabilities observed for these same experiments when using finite difference, shallow-ice approximation models on structured grids.

Keywords

86A4065N3065M08Stokes-flow modelingice-sheet modelingfinite element approximationfinite volume approximationparallel implementation
Type
Research Article
Information
Communications in Computational Physics , Volume 16 , Issue 4 , October 2014 , pp. 1056 - 1080
Copyright
Copyright © Global Science Press Limited 2014

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