subkilometer martian volcanoes properties and possible terrestrial analogs kilometer to subkilometer cones with large central craters are the most numerous volcanic structures in the northern plains of mars based on examination of more than 12 000 high resolution viking orbiter images most of these very small cones are located in parts of eastern acidalia and utopia isidis elysium planitia measurements of base and pit diameter for some 2000 well resolved features show small variations in the histogram of base diameters between and within regions but remarkable similarity in the distribution of crater cone diameter ratios this suggests that the small cones had a similar origin with only minor variations in local conditions the acidalia cones are generally larger more widely distributed and occur on a greater variety of terrains than those in utopia isidis elysium based on morphology distribution and the crater cone ratio histograms the smallest martian cones may be similar to icelandic pseudocraters somewhat larger steeper cones with smaller crater cone ratios which also occur in eastern acidalia may be analogs of terrestrial cinder cones

an ice shelf model test based on the ross ice shelf a standard numerical experiment featuring the ross ice shelf antarctica is presented as a test package for the development and intercomparison of ice shelfmodels the emphasis of this package is solution of stress equilibrium equations for an ice shelf velocity consistent with present observations as ademonstration we compare five independently developed ice shelf models based on finite difference and finite element methods our results suggest thatthere is little difference between finite element and finite difference methods in capturing the basic large scale flow features of the ice shelf we additionallyshow that the fit between model and observed velocity depends strongly on the ice shelf temperature field for which there is presently little observationalcontrol the main differences between model results are due to the equations being solved the boundary conditions at the ice front and the discretisationmethod finite element vs finite difference

basal friction of ice stream e west antarctica we use surface velocity derived from sequential landsat imagery and a control method to estimate the basal friction distribution of a major west antarctic ice stream the area averaged basal stress is approximately 1 4 10 4 pa or about 29 of the area averaged driving stress of 4 9 10 4 pa uncertainty of the derived area averaged basal stress is difficult to assess and depends primarily on spatial variation of the flow law rate factor in the constitutive law spatial variation associated with depth averaged temperature variation gives an uncertainty of approximately 10 3 pa approximately 60 of the ice stream has a basal stress magnitude less than 10 4 pa and approximately 30 has less than 10 3 pa these characteristics suggest the presence of a mechanically weak water charged subglacial till small scale sticky spots where basal friction exceeds the area averaged driving stress are scattered irregularly across the subglacial regime and comprise approximately 15 of the ice stream area sticky spots cluster in regions where landsat imagery suggests structural features in the underlying bedrock

shear margins in glaciers and ice sheets analytical and numerical techniques are used to examine the flow response of a sloped slab of power law fluid power n subjected to basal boundary conditions that vary spatially across the flow direction as for example near an ice stream margin with planar basal topography the primary assumption is that basal shear stress is proportional to the basal speed time a spatially variable slip resistance the ratio of mean basal speed to the speed originating from shearing through the thickness denoted as r gives a measure of how slippery the bed is the principal conclusion is that a localized disturbance in slip resistance affects the basal stress and speed in a zone spread over a greater width of the flow in units of ice thickness h the spatial scale of spreading is proportional to a single dimensionless number r n r n 1 1 n 1 derived from n and r the consequence for a shear zone above a sharp jump in slip resistance is that the shearing is spread out over a boundary layer with a width proportional to r n for an ice stream caused by a band of low slip resistance with a half width of wh the margins influence velocity and stress in the central part of the band depending on r n in comparison to w three regimes can be identified which for n 3 are quantified as follows low r defined as r 3 1w for which the boundary layers from both sides bridge across the full flow width and the driving stress in the center is supported almost entirely by side drag intermediate r for which the driving stress in the center is supported by a combination of basal and side drag shear zones that are narrower than predicted on the basis of this theory r 3 would require localized softening of the ice to explain the concentration of deformation at a shorter scale

basal hydraulic system of a west antarctic ice stream constraints from borehole observations pressure and tracer measurements in boreholes drilled to the bottom of ice stream b west antarctica are used to obtain information about the basal water conduit system in which high water pressures are developed these high pressures presumably make possible the rapid movement of the ice stream pressure in the system is indicated by the borehole water level once connection to the conduit system is made on initial connection here also called breakthrough to the basal water system the water level drops in a few minutes to an initial depth in the range 96 117 m below the surface these water levels are near but mostly somewhat deeper than the flotation level of about 100m depth water level at which basal water pressure and ice overburden pressure are equal which is calculated from depth density profiles and is measured in one borehole the conduit system can be modelled as a continuous or somewhat discontinuous gap between ice and bed the thickness of the gap has to be about 2 mm to account for the water level drop on breakthrough and about 4 mm to fit the results of a salt tracer experiment indicating downstream transport at a speed of 7 5 mm s 1 the above gap conduit model is however ruled out by the way a pressure pulse injected into the basal water system at breakthrough propagates outward from the injection hole and also by the large hole to hole variation in measured basal pressure which if present in a gap conduit system with 2 or 4 mm would result in unacceptably large local water fluxes an alternative model that avoids the e objections called the gap opening model involves opening a gap as injection proceeds starting with a thin film the injection of water under pressure lifts the ice mass a round the borehole creating a gap 3 or 4 mm wide at the ice bed interface evaluated quantitatively the gap opening model accounts for the volume of water that the basal watery system accepts on breakthrough which obviates the gap conduit model in order to transport basal meltwater from upstream it is then necessary for the complete hydraulic model to contain also a network of relatively large conduits of which the most promising type is the canal conduit proposed theoretically by walder and fowler 1994 flat low conduits incised into the till 0 1 m deep and perhaps 1 m wide with a flat ice roof the basal water pressure data suggest that the canals are spaced 50 300 m apart much closer than r tunnel would be the deepest observed water level 117 m i the most likely to reflect the actual water pressure in the canals corresponding to a basal effective pressure of 1 6 bar in this interpretation the shallower water levels are affected by loss of hydraulic head in the narrow passageway s that connect along the bed from borehole to canal s once a borehole has frozen up and any passageways connecting with canals have become closed a pressure sensor in contact with the unfrozen till that underlies the ice will measure the pore pressure in the till given enough time for pressure equilibration this pressure varies considerably with time over the equivalent water level range from 100 to 113 m basal pressure sensors 500 m apart report uncorrelated variations whereas sensors in boreholes 25 m apart report mostly but not entirely well correlated variations of unknown origin in part of the record remarkable anticorrelated variations are interspersed with positively correlated one and there are rare abrupt excursions to extreme water levels as deep as 125m and as shallow as 74 m a diurnal pressure fluctuation intermittently observed may possibly be caused by the ocean tide in the ross sea the lack of any observed variation in ice stream motion when large percentagewise variations in basal effective pressure were occurring according to our data suggests that the observed pressure variations are sufficiently local and so randomly variable from place to place that they are averaged out in the process by which the basal motion of the ice stream is determined by an integration over a large area of the bed

a 3 d model for the antarctic ice sheet a sensitivity study on the glacial interglacial contrast on the longer climatic time scales changes in the elevation and extent of the antarctic ice sheet have an important role in modulating global atmospheric and oceanographic processes and contribute significantly to world wide sea levels in this paper a 3 d time dependent thermomechanical model for the entire ice sheet is presented that is subsequently used to examine the effects of glacial interglacial shifts in environmental boundary conditions on its geometry the model takes into account a coupled ice shelf grounding line dynamics basal sliding and isostatic bed adjustment and considers the fully coupled velocity and temperature fields ice flow is calculated on a fine mesh 40 km horizontal grid size and 10 layers in the vertical for grounded and floating ice and a stress transition zone in between at the grounding line where all stress components contribute in the effective stress in the flow law there is free interaction between ice sheet and ice shelf so that the entire geometry is internally generated a simulation of the present ice sheet reveals that the model is able to yield realistic results a series of sensitivity experiments are then performed in which lower temperatures reduced accumulation rates and lower global sea level stands are imposed either singly or in combination by comparing results of pairs of experiments the effects of each of these environmental changes can be determined in agreement with glacial geological evidence we found that the most pronounced changes show up in the west antarctic ice sheet configuration they appear to be essentially controlled by variations in eustatic sea level whereas typical glacial interglacial changes in temperature and ice deposition rates tend to balance one another these findings support the hypothesis that the antarctic ice sheet basically follows glacial episodes in the northern hemisphere by means of sea level teleconnections grounding occurs more readily in the weddell sea than in the ross sea and long time scales appear to be involved it may take up to 30 40000 years for these continental shelf areas to become completely grounded after an initial stepwise perturbation in boundary conditions according to these reconstructions a steady state antarctic ice sheet may contribute some 16 m to global sea level lowering at maximum glaciation

changes in the west antarctic ice sheet the portion of the west antarctic ice sheet that flows into the ross sea is thinning in some places and thickening in others these changes are not caused by any current climatic change but by the combination of a delayed response to the end of the last global glacial cycle and an internal instability the near future impact of the ice sheet on global sea level is largely due to processes internal to the movement of the ice sheet and not so much to the threat of a possible greenhouse warming thus the near term future of the ice sheet is already determined however too little of the ice sheet has been surveyed to predict its overall future behavior

the marginal shear stress of ice stream b west antarctica to ascertain whether the velocity of ice stream b west antarctica may be controlled by the stress in its marginal shear zones the snake and the dragon we undertook a determination of the marginal shear stress in the dragon near camp up b by using ice itself as a stress meter the observed marginal shear strain rate of 0 14 a 1 is used to calculate the marginal shear stress from the flow law of ice determined by creep tests on ice cores from a depth of 300 m in the dragon obtained by using a hot water ice coring drill the test specimen orientation relative to the stress axes in the tests is chosen on the basis of c axis fabrics so that the test applies horizontal shear across vertical planes parallel to the margin the resulting marginal shear stress is 2 2 0 3 10 5 pa this implies that 63 100 of the ice stream s support against gravitational loading comes from the margins and only 37 0 from the base so that the margins play an important role in controlling the ice stream motion the marginal shear stress value is twice that given by the ice stream model of echelmeyer and others 1994 and the corresponding strain rate enhancement factors differ greatly e 1 2 vs 10 12 5 this large discrepancy could be explained by recrystallization of the ice during or shortly after coring estimates of the expected recrystallization time scale bracket the 1 h time scale of coring and leave the likelihood of recrystallization uncertain however the observed two maximum fabric type is not what is expected for annealing recrystallization from the sharp single maximum fabric that would be expected in situ at the high shear strains involved 20 experimental data from wilson 1982 suggest that if the core did recrystallize the prior fabric was a two maximum fabric not substantially different from the observed one which implies that the measured flow law and derived marginal shear stress are applicable to the in situ situation these issues need to be resolved by further work to obtain a more definitive observational assessment of the marginal shear stress

new and improved determinations of velocity of ice streams b and c west antarctica measurements of velocity have been made on and next to ice streams b and c west antarctica the results are more precise than previous work and constitute a 93 increase in the number of values these velocities are used to describe the confluence of flow into the ice streams and the development of fast ice stream flow the onset of fast streaming flow occurs in many separate tributaries that coalesce down glacier into the major ice streams for those inter stream ridges that have been studied the flow is consistent with steady state along ice stream b gradients in longitudinal stress offer little resistance to the ice flow the transition from basal drag control to ice shelf flow is achieved through reduced drag at the glacier base and increased resistance associated with lateral drag velocities in the trunk of ice stream c are nearly zero but those at the up glacial head are similar to those at the head of ice stream b

source rock burial history and seal effectiveness key facets to understanding hydrocarbon exploration potential in the east and central irish sea basins the timing of hydrocarbon generation from carboniferous source rocks and the lack of evapo rites within the triassic mercia mudstone group seal sequence have contributed significantly to the lack of exploration success in the triassic sherwood sandstone play of the central irish sea basin apatite fission track analysis afta combined with vitrinite reflectance data from the central irish sea basin and adjacent areas indicates that maximum burial and heating of the carboniferous section was achieved by the early cretaceous the long residence period for trapped hydrocarbons generated in the early cretaceous combined with the ineffectiveness of the mercia mudstone group seal caused by the absence of annealing halites and the presence of thief sandstones led to hydrocarbon loss through trap breaching during subsequent tectonic events in contrast maximum burial of carboniferous source rocks in the central east irish sea hydrocarbon province was achieved in the late cretaceous early tertiary giving a shorter residence period for generated hydrocarbons the combination of a short residence period and the presence of a halite bearing mercia mudstone seal sequence significantly improved hydrocarbon retention within the sherwood sandstone reservoir if traps were episodically breached during the late tertiary they were recharged by the inversion process which caused gas expansion spill from charged traps and lateral remigration of hydrocarbons updip the inversion related pressure drop also caused retrograde condensate dropout from gas accumulations to provide a supply of late condensate for preferential spill and remigration

evolution of the east antarctic ice sheet a numerical study of thermo mechanical response patterns with changing climate an efficient numerical ice sheet model including time dependence and full thermo mechanical coupling has been developed in order to investigate the thermal regime and overall configuration of a polar ice sheet with respect to changing environmental conditions from basic sensitivity experiments in which a schematic east antarctic ice sheet is forced with a typical glacial interglacial climatic shift it is found that i the mutual interaction of temperature and deformation has a stabilizing effect on its steady state configuration ii in the transient mode this climatic transition initially leads to increased ice thickness due to enhanced accumulation after which this trend is reversed due to a warmer base timescales for this reversal are of the order of 103 years in marginal zones and of 104 years in interior regions iii horizontal heat advection plays a major role in damping possible runaway behaviour due to the dissipation strain rate feed back suggesting that creep instability is a rather unlikely candidate to initiate surging of the east antarctic ice sheet the model is then applied to four east antarctic flow lines only the flow line passing through wilkes land appears to be vulnerable to widespread basal melting due to enhanced basal warming following climatic warming time dependent modelling of the vostok flow line indicates that the vostok station area has risen about 95 m since the beginning of the present interglacial due to thermomechanical effects which is of particular interest in interpreting the palaeoclimatic signal of the ice core obtained there

steady flow of a viscous ice stream across a no slip free slip transition at the bed an exact analytic description of the steady downhill flow of a viscous ice stream across a no slip to free slip transition in basal boundary condition suggests ways in which such transitions might be detected by observations of ice stream surface properties we find that the best expression of this transition is in the free surface profile which dips over the point of transition and becomes horizontal far downstream

a new numerical model of coupled inland ice sheet ice stream and ice shelf flow and its application to the west antarctic ice sheet we have developed a dynamic thermodynamic finite element numerical model that couples inland ice sheet ice stream and ice shelf dynamics this new model stands apart from other whole ice sheet models in its explicit treatment of ice stream flow additionally the model accounts for both horizontal and vertical advection and diffusion of temperature in the flowing ice in present day simulations of the west antarctic ice sheet wais modeled ice velocity agrees well with observed ice flow in particular the model reproduces the pattern of speed variation across ice streams although the continuous downstream speed up of ice flow cannot be reproduced without concurrent downstream variation in basal friction model thermodynamics evaluated qualitatively by model prediction of the spatial distribution of basal melting and quantitatively by comparison with ice temperature measured in boreholes at several locations are sound in particular the model reproduces the broad pattern of frozen bed inter ice stream ridges and melted bed ice streams model initialization for long time simulations is somewhat limited by computation time and by a thermodynamic feedback at sites of large viscous heating that can be a problem in heat balance only model initializations methods for averting those initialization problems are discussed the new model can accommodate a variety of boundary conditions such as various bed rheologies and is well suited to investigate the origin and evolution of wais ice streams within the context of the whole ice sheet system

the role of lateral drag in the dynamics of ice stream b antarctica the partitioning of resistive force between the bed and sides of ice stream b antarctica is obtained for three large areas that have been measured using repeat aerial photogrammetry problems associated with data errors and local variations in ice strength and velocity are reduced by considering the areally averaged budget of forces for each photo block results indicate that the bed under ice stream b must be very weak and unable to provide muche resistance mechanical control on this ice stream emanates almost entirely from the lateral margins