Impementing the Lazeroms' Parametrisation of Ice Melt Plumes in a Marina Ice Sheet Model

Abstract

In this thesis we look at the implementation of the ice shelf melt plume parametrisation developed by Lazeroms into a hybrid SIA+SSA ice sheet/shelf model IMAU-ICE. To test the melt plume model, we use a the synthetic enbayment setup from the MISMIP+ experiments to observe the behaviour of an buttressed marine ice sheet when it undergoes melt driven retreat. We show the original two-dimensional implementation of Lazeroms causes spurious numerical wiggles irregularities to appear on the ice draft. With modifications to the algorithm we show that the melt plume parametrisation can be effectively used as a tool to determine sub-shelf basal melt without causing irregular ice geometries. However we only show that the parametrisation works in this idealised test setup, we strongly suggest that more work needs to be done to evaluate the plume parametrisation in more realistic setups.