Abstract: | Ice sheets deform under gravity and spread into the surrounding oceans, where their leading edge can detach from the ground and form floating ice shelves. The mechanical response of the ice depends on its complex rheology, and the interactions of ice with the deformable substrate that supports it and with the ocean. This leads to a wide range of phenomena observed near the transition from grounded to floating ice, such as undulations in the ice surface, fractures in the floating shelves, and complex spatiotemporal patterns in the ice flow. My talk will range over these phenomena, presenting laboratory experiments and mathematical modelling aimed to unfold the governing dynamics.
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