Recent advances in understanding ice sheet dynamics

Glaciers and ice sheets play a dynamic role in Earth's climate system, influencing regional- and global-scale climate and responding to climate change on time scales from years to millennia. They are also an integral part of Earth's landscape in alpine and polar regions, where they are an active agent in isostatic, tectonic, and Earth surface processes. This review paper summarizes recent progress in understanding and modelling ice sheet dynamics, from the microphysical processes of ice deformation in glaciers to continental-scale processes that influence ice dynamics. Based on recent insights and research directions, it can be expected that a new generation of ice sheet models will soon replace the current standard. Improvements that can be foreseen in the near future include: (i) the addition of internally-consistent evolutionary equations for ice crystal fabric (anisotropic flow laws), (ii) more generalized flow laws that include different deformation mechanisms under different stress regimes, (iii) explicit incorporation of the effects of chemical impurities and grain size (dynamic recrystallization) on ice deformation, (iv) higher-order stress solutions to the momentum balance (Stokes' equation) that governs ice sheet flow, and (v) the continued merger of ice sheet models with increasingly complex Earth systems models, which include fully-coupled subglacial hydrological and geological processes. Examples from the Greenland Ice Sheet and Vatnajökull Ice Cap, Iceland are used to illustrate several of these new directions and their importance to glacier dynamics.