The role of hydraulic conductivity in the Pine Island Glacier's subglacial water distribution

Global climate warming leads to ever-increasing glacier mass loss. Pine Island Glacier in Antarctica is one of the largest contributors to global sea level rise (SLR). One of the biggest uncertainties in the assessment of glacier contribution to SLR at present are subglacial hydrology processes which are less well known than other ice dynamical processes. We use the Glacier Drainage System (GlaDS) model which couples both distributed and channelized components to simulate the basal hydrology of Pine Island Glacier with basal sliding and meltwater production taken from a full-Stokes Elmer/Ice model fitting observed surface velocities. We find ≈100 km long Rothlisberger channels up to 26 m in diameter extending up glacier from the grounding line along the main trunk of Pine Island Glacier delivering 51 m ³ s ⁻¹ of fresh water to the grounding line. Channelization occurs at high water pressure because of high basal melt rates (maximum of 1 m a ⁻¹) caused by high rates of shear heating in regions with fast ice flow (>1000 m a ⁻¹). We simulate a shallow “swamp” of 0.8 m water depth where flow transitions from a distributed system into the channels. We performed a set of 38 sensitivity experiments varying sheet and channel conductivity over 4 orders of magnitude. We find a threshold behavior in distributed sheet conductivity above which basal water pressures are unaffected by changing channel conductivities. Our findings suggest a strong need to better understand controls on basal water conductivity through the distributed system. This issue is critical to improve model-based predictive capability for the Pine Island Glacier and, more generally, the Antarctic Ice Sheet.