Numerical reconstructions of the flow and basal conditions of the Rhine glacier, European Central Alps, at the Last Glacial Maximum

Cohen, Denis; Gillet-Chaulet, Fabien; Haeberli, Wilfried; Machguth, Horst; Fischer, Urs H

doi:10.5194/tc-12-2515-2018

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Cohen, D., Gillet-Chaulet, F., Haeberli, W., Machguth, H., & Fischer, U. H. (2018). Numerical reconstructions of the flow and basal conditions of the Rhine glacier, European Central Alps, at the Last Glacial Maximum. The Cryosphere, 12, 2515–2544. https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-12-2515-2018

Abstract

At the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM), the Rhine glacier in the Swiss Alps covered an area of about 16,000 km2. As part of an integrative study about the safety of repositories for radioactive waste under ice age conditions in Switzerland, we modeled the Rhine glacier using a fully-coupled, three-dimensional, transient, thermo-mechanical Stokes flow model down to a horizontal resolution of about 500 m. The accumulation and ablation gradients that roughly reproduced the geomorphic reconstructions of glacial extent and ice thickness suggest