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Inferring geothermal heat flux from an ice-borehole temperature profile at Law Dome, East Antarctica

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 April 2020

Laura Mony*
Affiliation:
Institute for Marine and Antarctic Studies, University of Tasmania, Private Bag 129, Hobart, Tasmania7001, Australia
Jason L. Roberts
Affiliation:
Australian Antarctic Division, Channel Highway, Kingston, Tasmania7050, Australia Antarctic Climate & Ecosystems Cooperative Research Centre, University of Tasmania, Private Bag 80, Hobart, Tasmania7001, Australia
Jacqueline A. Halpin
Affiliation:
Institute for Marine and Antarctic Studies, University of Tasmania, Private Bag 129, Hobart, Tasmania7001, Australia
*
Author for correspondence: Laura Mony, E-mail: lmony@utas.edu.au
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Abstract

Geothermal heat flux (GHF) is an important control on the dynamics of Antarctica's ice sheet because it controls basal melt and internal deformation. However, it is hard to estimate because of a lack of in-situ measurements. Estimating GHF from ice-borehole temperature profiles is possible by combining a heat-transfer equation and the physical properties of the ice sheet in a numerical model. In this study, we truncate ice-borehole temperature profiles to determine the minimum ratio of temperature profile depth to ice-sheet thickness required to produce acceptable GHF estimations. For Law Dome, a temperature profile that is within 60% of the local ice thickness is sufficient for an estimation that is within approximately one median absolute deviation of the whole-profile GHF estimation. This result is compared with the temperature profiles at Dome Fuji and the West Antarctic Ice Sheet divide which require a temperature profile that is 80% and more than 91% of the ice thickness, respectively, for comparable accuracy. In deriving GHF median estimations from truncated temperature profiles, it is possible to discriminate between available GHF models. This is valuable for assessing and constraining future GHF models.

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Type
Papers
Creative Commons
Creative Common License - CCCreative Common License - BY
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2020
Figure 0

Fig. 1. Location of deep temperature profile boreholes and different local GHF estimations. Ice-sheet thickness data from BEPMAP 2 (Fretwell and others, 2013) and Basemap from Quantarctica and the Norwegian Polar Institute 1: Gow and others (1968); 2: Risk and Hochstein (1974); 3: Foster (1978); 4: Decker and Bucher (1982); 5: Nicholls and Paren (1993); 6: Dahl-Jensen and others (1999); 7: Hondoh and others (2002); 8: Price and others (2002); 9: Engelhardt (2004); 10: Carter and others (2009); 11: Morin and others (2010); 12: Schröder and others (2011); 13: Clow and others (2012); 14: Zagorodnov and others (2012); 15: Mulvaney and others (2012); 16 and 17: Carson and others (2014); 18: Fisher and others (2015); 19: Dmitriev and others (2016); 20: Parrenin and others (2017); 21: Begeman and others (2017); 22: Dziabek and others (2017) (26 measurements).

Figure 1

Fig. 2. GHF values from available continent-wide GHF maps for deep ice borehole locations in Antarctica (see Fig. 1).

Figure 2

Fig. 3. Ice-borehole temperature profiles for Law Dome (DSS site) (Morgan and others, 1997), Dome Fuji (Hondoh and others, 2002) and West Antarctic Ice Sheet Divide (Clow and others, 2012).

Figure 3

Table 1. Parameters used for testing the steady-state assumption

Figure 4

Table 2. Input values for the bedrock

Figure 5

Table 3. Optimised input values in the ice

Figure 6

Fig. 4. GHF estimation for DSS site from 260 iterations of our model by using a temperature profile of 1176.8 m ice equivalent depth.

Figure 7

Fig. 5. (A) GHF median values with their MAD for the DSS site using temperature profile truncated at different depths. (B) GHF estimation from Dahl-Jensen and others (1999), Martos and others (2017), Liefferinge and Pattyn (2013), Shapiro and Ritzwoller (2004).

Figure 8

Fig. 6. Comparison between the probability distribution at DSS for the entire temperature profile (LD100) and 20% of the temperature profile (LD20).

Figure 9

Fig. 7. (A) GHF median values with their MAD for Dome Fuji by using temperature profile truncated at different depths. (B) GHF estimation from Martos2017: Martos and others (2017), Liefferinge2013: Liefferinge and Pattyn (2013), Shapiro2004: Shapiro and Ritzwoller (2004), Hondoh2002: Hondoh and others (2002).

Figure 10

Fig. 8. (A) GHF median values with their MAD for WAIS divide by using temperature profile truncated at different depths. (B) GHF estimation from Martos2017: Martos and others (2017), Liefferinge2013: Liefferinge and Pattyn (2013), Shapiro2004: Shapiro and Ritzwoller (2004).

Figure 11

Table 4. Mean GHF estimations and Median Absolute Deviation (MAD) for Shapiro and Ritzwoller (2004), Liefferinge and Pattyn (2013) and Martos and others (2017)