THETIS: Thetis modeling of the Heterogenous Environment beneath Thwaites Ice Shelf

The current, rapid melting of Thwaites Glacier in Antarctica and its ongoing contribution to sea-level rise are of broad societal concern for their potential to impact coastal communities around the globe. Sea-level rise more than three meters due to the eventual collapse of this glacier and its neighbors could displace millions. The results of this research will help to project the future behavior of this critical glacier by combining observations and computer modeling of the glacier.

The results will also advance the ability to estimate the future sea-level contribution of this glacier and contribute to the broader effort of the International Thwaites Glacier Collaboration to provide better insight into future societal impacts. In addition, this project will contribute to the training and career development of a postdoctoral scholar.

This project will develop a computational model of the ocean around and beneath the Thwaites Glacier Ice Shelf in Antarctica. The project will develop Thetis, an unstructured-mesh, discontinuous Galerkin finite-element ocean model to simulate ocean circulation within the glacier sub-ice-shelf ocean cavity. The unstructured mesh will allow for increased resolution in important regions, such as the grounding zone, and regions with complex coastal geometry, effectively concentrating computational resources where they are needed most.

The unstructured mesh will also allow for smooth representations of coastal, seabed, and ice-base geometry, an improvement over the stair-step style boundaries of commonly used structured mesh models. The model developed for this project will not only be the most detailed model of the Thwaites Glacier ocean cavity, it will also represent a step forward for modeling of ocean-ice interaction in general.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.