Glacier damage evolution over ice flow timescales

The rate of mass loss from the Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets is controlled in large part by the processes of ice flow and ice fracture. Studies have shown these processes to be coupled: the development of fractured zones weakens the structural integrity of the ice, reducing ice viscosity and enabling more rapid flow. This coupling may have significant implications for the stability of ice shelves and the rate of flow from grounded ice. However, there are challenges with modeling this process, in large part due to the discrepancy in timescales of fracture and flow processes and to uncertainty about the construction of the damage evolution model. This leads to uncertainty about how fracture processes can affect ice viscosity and, therefore, projections of future ice mass loss. Here, we develop a damage evolution model that represents fracture initiation and propagation over ice flow timescales, with the goal of representing solely the effect of damage on flow behavior. We then apply this model to quantify the effect of damage on projections of glacier response to climate forcing. We use the MISMIP+ benchmark glacier configuration with the experiment Ice1r, which represents grounding line retreat due to basal melt forcing. In this model configuration, we find that damage can enhance mass loss from grounded and floating ice by ∼ 13 %–29 % in 100 years. The enhancement of mass loss due to damage is approximately of the same order as increasing the basal melt rate by 50 %. We further show the dependence of these results on uncertain model parameters. These results emphasize the importance of further studying the multiscale processes of damage initiation and growth from an experimental and observational standpoint and of incorporating this coupling into large-scale ice sheet models.