Direct Reconstruction of Three-dimensional Glacier Bedrock and Surface Elevation from Free Surface Velocity

This study presents a new algorithm to reconstruct both the ice-surface elevation and the altitude of the bedrock of a glacier from the knowledge of the ice-surface velocity which could potentially be obtained from satellite data. It requires the prior knowledge of the surface mass balance and basal...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:AIMS geosciences 2016-01, Vol.2 (1), p.45-63
Main Authors: Heining, C., Sellier, M.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Bedrock reconstruction
Glacier
Inverse problem
Shallow-Ice-Approximation
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Summary:This study presents a new algorithm to reconstruct both the ice-surface elevation and the altitude of the bedrock of a glacier from the knowledge of the ice-surface velocity which could potentially be obtained from satellite data. It requires the prior knowledge of the surface mass balance and basal conditions. The algorithm is realized in two steps: the first one involves the solution of a partial differential equation obtained from a rearrangement of the shallow-ice approximation and the second one involves the mere downslope integration of a non-linear function of the ice velocity and ice thickness. It is therefore an efficient algorithm which is in principle easy to implement. The algorithm is tested on synthetic data and is shown to be very successful with an ideal dataset and robust even when significant noise is added to the input data. Importantly, the inversion algorithm does not appear to amplify the input error in the data
ISSN:2471-2132
2471-2132
DOI:10.3934/geosci.2016.1.45