Pressure-Melting Effects in Basal Ice of Temperate Glaciers: Laboratory Studies and Field Observations Under Glacier D’Argentière

Abstract

AbstractThe suggestion that patches of basal ice may freeze to the bed of a glacier due to certain regelation effects has been tested in the laboratory by applying high hydrostatic pressures to ice samples at the pressure-melting point. During compression, ice temperatures follow the pressure-melting point closely, but after rapid decompression the ice temperature at first returns only half to three-quarters of the way to the pressure-melting point, after which it appears to warm by thermal conduction from outside the ice sample. If the moving ice at the base of a glacier behaves in the same way as it is exposed to changing pressure fields, frozen patches at bedrock are to be expected.Records of strain variations in a tunnel beneath Glacier d’Argentière show two types of strain events. The first is a rapid jump or offset in the recorded strain, while the second are strain excursions, initiated by a change in strain over a period up to ten seconds, followed by a gradual recovery to the original strain over some minutes. It is suggested that the offset events are due to nearby stress release due to fracturing of frozen patches of ice at the bedrock while the strain-excursion events show the more distant adjustment of the glacial bed to the former events due to the time lags associated with changes of water-film thickness and regelation heat flow.