The paleoglaciological concept that during the Pleistocene glacial hemi-cycles a super-large, structurally complex ice sheet developed in the Arctic and behaved as a single dynamic system. as the Antarctic ice sheet does today, has not yet been subjected to concerted studies designed to test the predictions of this concept. Yet, it may hold the keys to solutions of major problems of paleoglaciology, to understanding climate and sea-level changes. The Russian Arctic is the least-known region exposed to paleoglaciation by a hypothetical Arctic ice sheet but now it is more open to testing the concept. Implementation of these tests is a challenging task, as the region is extensive and the available data are controversial. Well-planned and coordinated field projects are needed today, as well as broad discussion of the known evidence, existing interpretations and new field results. Here we present the known evidence for paleoglaciation of the Russian Arctic continental shelf and reconstruct possible marine ice sheets that could have produced that evidence.

Four boreholes in Storglaciären, a small valley glacier in northern Sweden, were inspected with a video camera. In two of the boreholes, the apparent glacier bed was filmed. In one borehole, the bed was found to be composed of soft sediment, but in the other it consisted of bedrock. In the latter, the camera moved 5.6 mm relative to the bed during an 80 min period. The recorded camera movement showed a background motion which is in the expected range of basal sliding. Superimposed on the background motion, a jerky motion of a high-speed spike was found. The jerky motion is interpreted as a stress release induced by local topography at the ice–bed interface.

Deep gravel-pit exposures reveal the distribution and structure of till and underlying sand and gravel in drumlins near Waukesha, Wisconsin. The subglacial sediment is interpreted to have moved laterally into the drumlin sites because the till thickens from the margin to the core of the drumlins, the stone orientation in the till is perpendicular and oblique to ice flow on the drumlin margins, and recumbent isoclinal folds occur in sand on the drumlin margins with axes parallel to the drumlin axes. The resulting accumulations of sediment presented obstacles to ice flow and were streamlined into the minimum-drag drumlin shape by erosion on the margins and by remolding of material in the core of the drumlins. These drumlin nuclei may have formed at spots where there was low effective stress on the bed. The subglacial sediment became mobile as a result of high pore pressure that may have developed as ground water and subglacial melt water were trapped behind a frozen bed at the ice margin. Under certain conditions, however, lateral sediment flow might also have occurred when the sediment was frozen.

The development of strong preferred c-axis alignments in sea ice has been a subject of debate since its initial discovery in 1959. Although numerous theories have been proposed for its development, none has been able to account for all of its field characteristics.

A detailed field investigation was carried out at Pond Inlet, N.W.T., to describe further the occurrence and structure of this ice type. Data collected over the winter of 1983–84 suggest two possible mechanisms of development. The first involves the selective growth of crystals during the formation of the initial ice skim, while the second requires the solid-state rotation of slip planes during constrained plastic deformation.

Glacially induced flow naturally tends to thin and extended till cover through shock formation, even in the absence of longitudinal gradients in the applied stress. Thicker till cover has an increased effective pressure at its surface and base, a lower sliding velocity or deformation rate and above a critical thickness, a decrease in wave velocity with thickness, leading to reverse-facing shocks moving downstream. For sliding and for some theologies of internal deformation, a decrease in sediment flux with thickness occurs, implying backward-moving kinematic waves and reverse-facing, reverse-moving shock.

Downstream-facing shocks are also formed which move upstream if the till is sliding and downstream if the till is deforming internally. Eventually, shocks coalesce, leaving an upstream-lacing shock for sliding and a downstream-facing shock for internal deformation. It is observed that some drumlins have downstream blunt ends only.

Fairly realistic three-dimensional drumlin shapes can be produced from symmetric sediment bodies and barchan shapes can be produced from linear forms perpendicular to the ice-sheet flow.

The fact that viscous theories produce drumlinoid forms suggests that on this scale till behaves viscously and the the lower length scale for drumlins represents the plastic/viscous transition scale.

Apparent ice-surface topography is observed at several scales on Landsat multi-spectral scanner (MSS) imagery. Digitally enhanced MSS scenes from Antarctica and Nordaustlandet, Svalbard, are compared with ice-surface elevations from aircraft altimetry (relative accuracy 2–3 m) to show that this apparent topography is real. Apparent ice divides on Landsat images fit closely with divides on altimetric records. Ice-surface irregularities within drainage basins are also shown to be real. On Byrd Glacier, Antarctica, apparent “flow lines” coincide with ridges on altimetric records. Synoptic Landsat data, calibrated by information from aircraft altimetric flight lines, are used to classify the surface roughness of the ice caps on Nordaustlandet and 40% of the Antarctic ice sheet. On Nordaustlandet, the roughest ice is of amplitude 15–25 m and wavelength 3–4.5 km. Drainage basins with such rough surface characteristics may be associated with ice streams or possibly past surge activity. The most rough Antarctic terrain is up to 60 m in amplitude, with wavelengths of <10 km. The roughness of the Antarctic ice sheet increases with distance from ice divides, reflecting changes in the parameters affecting the transfer of basal stresses to the ice surface.

This paper presents an original method for sampling special ice types like debris-rich ice or brittle ice that cannot be prepared using the standard band-saw/microtome procedure. The general working principles of the diamond wire-sawing technique are explained, and special adaptations for ice-cutting, thick-sectioning and thin-sectioning are discussed.

A power law relation between stress and strain rate of the form was used to describe the response to strain rate of S1 ice loaded across the columns at –10° C. The rate exponent, n, decreased with increasing strain from about 4.6 at an observed peak on the load displacement curve to approximately 2.6 at a shortening of 2%. Analysis of these results and of the results of other authors on different forms of ice deformed at the same temperature suggests that the power law exponent, n is proportional to Fc/Fg The parameter Fc/Fg is the far-field basal dislocation climb force divided by the glide force.

Outlet streams of Variegated Glacier, Alaska, U.S.A., were observed before, during and after the surge of 1982–83. Measurements of discharge, suspended sediment and dissolved load in the outlet streams are presented for the years 1982–84, and comparisons are made with data from previous years. The data are interpreted to yield characteristics of the basal hydraulic system. The surging region of the glacier was underlain by a basal hydraulic zone of low water velocity and high water storage, inferred to be a distributed-flow system. The ice down-glacier of the propagating surge front was underlain by a high-velocity, low-storage zone, inferred to be a conduit system. The volume of water stored above the surge front was the major hydraulic control on the surge. Basal bedrock erosion during the surge was extreme in comparison to non-surging glaciers. The sediment output was directly proportional to the basal sliding, with a dimensionless erosion rate (meters eroded from the bed divided by meters of sliding) of order 1.0 × 10−4. Total erosion during the 20 year surge cycle was on the order of 0.3 m of bedrock, with approximately two-thirds occurring during the 2 years of the surge peak, and the bulk of this during the peak 2 months.

Recent theoretical studies of glacier hydrology have assumed that subglacial conduits are completely filled with water under steady-state conditions. This, however, is not necessarily the case. Where discharges are larger than a few tens of liters per second and the down-glacier slope of the bed is more than a few degrees, the potential energy released by water descending this slope may be capable of melting the walls of a subglacial conduit many times faster than the conduit can close by plastic flow of the ice. As a result, the pressure in such tunnels may normally be atmospheric, or possibly even at the triple-point pressure if there is no open connection to the glacier surface. Simple calculations suggest that such pressures in subglacial conduits may be more common than heretofore anticipated.

The positions of such “open” conduits may be unstable to small perturbations in discharge or ice velocity. This is because the mechanical energy available in excess of that needed to balance closure can instead offset the general flow of the ice. Conduits can thus trend diagonally across the direction of ice flow. If an increase in the angle which such a conduit makes with the ice flow direction also results in an increase in slope of the conduit, more mechanical energy will become available, resulting in a positive feedback process.

Subglacial channels at atmospheric pressure may influence the origin and morphology of certain glacial landforms, such as eskers and “plastically-molded” features.

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. The streamwise velocity at the surface shows a gradual change across the transition, and this is in disagreement with previous studies which suggest a marked change. Basal shear stress and basal pressure exhibit singularities at the point of transition. As concluded in previous study, the former singularity is a likely point of strong basal erosion. The latter singularity is problematical, however, because it violates the assumptions which make the exact solution possible. It is not clear how this problem can be overcome without appealing to thermodynamics, non-Newtonian material properties, cavitation or wake separation.

Two holes were drilled to depths greater than 300m in the Antarctic ice sheet, near Cape Folger on the Law Dome. The holes underwent considerable closure below 250m with localized strain-rates as high as 1 to 1.5×10−6 s−1. The closure observed in holes was non-uniform and occurred in zones 0.5 to 3 m wide. These Zones parallel the flow plane in the ice mass and are associated with a distinct domainal structure. High-closure zones are characterized by interlocking and irregular-shaped ice grains with many sub-horizontal c-axes and only occasional c-axis clusters at a high angle to the flow plane. Low-closure zones contain tabular grains with the long dimension parallel to the flow plane, abundant deformation features and a predominance of c-axes oriented at a high angle to the flow plane. The relationship between closure rate and c-axis fabric is attributed to marked plastic flow by intracrystalline slip on the basal plane to produce higher closure in areas where there is a greater variation in c-axis orientation. This deformation is attributable to overburden pressure and hence is related to depth, and is independent of shear within the main body of the ice mass.

The Greenland ice sheet is modelled to simulate its extent and volume in warmer climates, and to find out whether the ice sheet would re-form on the ice-free bedrock under present climatic conditions. The ice-sheet model is a three-dimensional thermo-mechanical model with a fine-resolution grid. The bedrock surface beneath the ice sheet was mapped using radio-echo-sounding measurements by the Electromagnetic Institute, Copenhagen. The model experiments show that increased temperature will result in ice-margin retreat, but the ice sheet is relatively stable; it takes a temperature rise of at least 6 deg for the ice sheet to disappear completely, which indicates that the ice sheet probably survived the last interglacial. Furthermore, it appears that the Greenland ice sheet is not a mere relict ice mass from a previously colder climate but that the ice sheet will still re-form on the bare bedrock under the present, or even slightly warmer, climatic conditions.

For our work in the Filchner-Ronne Ice Shelf Programme (FRISP), we have developed a new technique for measuring the bottom-melting rate with high reliability. The method is based on time-domain reflectometry (TDR) measurements of transmission lines inserted into melt holes. The TDR-data are digitally recorded on magnetic tape. System resolution has been estimated at 0.2 m. Hence, re-measuring after 1 year gives an accuracy of 10% for melting rates of 2m a-1. Two transmission lines for TDR measurements were installed during the German FRIS Expedition 1989–90. This paper describes the design of the system. Examples of recorded wave forms are given.

The rate of ice growth and heat transfer during a stationary wet-growth icing was studied, based on wind-tunnel experiments of Reynolds numbers of I04 to 105, and air temperatures of 0°C to –13°C. The convective heat-transfer coefficient, a quantity of primary importance entering the heat-balance equation of a freezing surface, was found to depend strongly on the liquid water content in the air (or rather, on the impinging water flow on the surface). The convective heat-transfer coefficient was considered theoretically and the dependence is thought to be caused by an increase in the surface roughness and, especially, by an effect of the impinging water droplets on viscous sub-layers and on turbulent heat transfer near the icing boundary. The above evaluation allows us to calculate an accretion efficiency for each icing condition.

Periods of dramatically accelerated motion, in which the flow velocity increases suddenly from about 55 cm/d to a peak of 100–300cm/d and then decreases gradually over the course of a day, occurred repeatedly during June and July 1978–81 in Variegated Glacier (Alaska), a surging-type glacier that surged in 1982–83. These “mini-surges” appear to be related mechanistically to the main surge. The flow-velocity peak propagates down-glacier as a wave at a speed of about 0.3 km/h, over a reach of about 6 km in length. It is accompanied by a propagating pressure wave in the basal water system of the glacier, in which, after a preliminary drop, the pressure rises rapidly to a level greater than the ice-overburden pressure at the glacier bed, and then drops gradually over a period of 1–2 d, usually reaching a new low for the summer. The peak velocity is accompanied by a peak of high seismic activity due to widespread fresh crevassing. It is also accompanied by a rapid uplift of the glacier surface, amounting to 6–11 cm, which then relaxes over a period of 1–2 d. Maximum uplift rate coincides with the peak in flow velocity; the peak in accumulated uplift lags behind the velocity peak by 2 h. The uplift is mainly due to basal cavitation driven by the high basal water pressure, although the strain wave associated with the mini-surge motion can also contribute. Basal cavitation is probably responsible for the pulse of high turbidity that appears in the terminal outflow stream in association with each mini-surge. In the down-glacier reach, where the mini-surge waves are attenuating, the observed strain wave corresponds to what is expected for the propagating pulse in flow velocity, but in the reach of maximum mini-surge motion the strain wave has a form quite different, possibly related to special features in the mini-surge initiation process from that point up-stream. The flow acceleration in the mini-surges is due to enhanced basal sliding caused by the high basal water pressure and the consequent reduction of bed friction. A preliminary velocity increase shortly before the pressure wave arrives is caused by the forward shove that the main accelerated mass exerts on the ice ahead of it, and the resulting preliminary basal cavitation causes the drop in water pressure shortly before the pressure wave arrives. The mini-surge wave propagation is controlled by the propagation of the water-pressure wave in the basal water-conduit system. The propagation characteristics result from a longitudinal gradient (up-glacier increase) in hydraulic conductivity of the basal water system in response to the up-glacier increase of the basal water pressure in the mini-surge wave. The mini-surge waves are initiated in a succession of areas situated generally progressively up-glacier during the course of the summer season. In these areas, presumably, melt water that has accumulated in subglacial (?) reservoirs is released suddenly into the basal water system immediately below, generating a pressure rise that propagates down-stream from there. Relationships of the mini-surges to the main surge are seen in the role of high basal water pressure in causing the rapid glacier motion in both phenomena, in the pulse-propagation features of both, and in the high outflow turbidity associated with both. The mini-surges of Variegated Glacier have a strong resemblance to movement and uplift events observed in Unteraargletscher and Findelengletscher, Switzerland. This bears on the question whether the mini-surges are a particular characteristic of surge-type glaciers prior to surge.

A perturbation method is used to analyse the stability of a thin till layer overlain by a deep ice layer. Ice is modelled as a linearly viscous fluid, while the till viscosity has power-law dependence on stress and effective pressure. A linearized set of equations yields descriptions of the coupling of the ice flow with the sediment flow and reveals parameter ranges where the till-perturbation amplitude can grow. This sheet-flow instability is an essential part of any theory of drumlin formation and shows that viscous models of till have the ability to explain typical deforming-bed features. This is of great significance for large-scale ice-sheet modelling.

A 1985 survey at Rakhiot Glacier, Nanga Parbat, Punjab Himalaya, indicates that the glacier terminus is advanced about 200 m from its 1954 position. Between 1930 and 1954, the dates of previous surveys, the glacier terminus had thinned and back-wasted 450 m. The recession prior to the 1960s, followed by advance into the 1970s and perhaps 1980s, parallels patterns of glacier fluctuation found in the adjacent western and central Karakorum.