Balance between driving stress and basal drag results in linearity between driving stress and basal yield stress in Antarctica's Siple Coast Ice Streams

Abstract. Ice streams are distinct, fast-flowing regimes within ice sheets that exhibit fundamentally different characteristics as compared to the slow-moving inner parts of the ice sheets. While along-flow surface profiles of ice sheets are typically convex, some ice streams show linearly sloping or even concave surface profiles. We use observational data of the Siple Coast in Antarctica to inversely calculate membrane stresses, driving stresses and basal yield stresses based on the Shallow Shelf Approximation. Herein we assume that these marine-based ice streams are isothermal and in neglecting vertical shear we assume that their flow is dominated by sliding. We find that in the Siple Coast ice streams the membrane stresses are negligible and the driving stress balances the basal drag. It follows directly that in the Coulomb limit (i.e. basal drag independent of velocity) the driving stress is linear in the basal yield stress. In addition, we find that the ice topography and the basal conditions developed such that the driving stress is linear in the basal yield stress regardless of the choice of the pseudo plastic exponent in the basal drag parameterization.