Possible impacts of a 1000&thinsp;km long hypothetical subglacial river valley towards Petermann Glacier in northern Greenland

Chambers, Christopher; Greve, Ralf; Altena, Bas; Lefeuvre, Pierre-Marie

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-14-3747-2020

Articles | Volume 14, issue 11

https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-14-3747-2020

© Author(s) 2020. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-14-3747-2020

© Author(s) 2020. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 14, issue 11

Research article

|

12 Nov 2020

Research article |

| 12 Nov 2020

Possible impacts of a 1000 km long hypothetical subglacial river valley towards Petermann Glacier in northern Greenland

Christopher Chambers, Ralf Greve, Bas Altena, and Pierre-Marie Lefeuvre

Model code and software

SICOPOLIS v5.1 R. Greve and the SICOPOLIS Developer Team https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.3727511

Short summary

The topography of the rock below the Greenland ice sheet is not well known. One long valley appears as a line of dips because of incomplete data. So we use ice model simulations that unblock this valley, and these create a watercourse that may represent a form of river over 1000 km long under the ice. When we melt ice at the bottom of the ice sheet only in the deep interior, water can flow down the valley only when the valley is unblocked. It may have developed while an ice sheet was present.