Response of valley glaciers to climate change and kinematic waves: a study with a numerical ice-flow model

A simple numerical flow model that couples mass divergence directly to basal shear stress as the only driving force is used to study kinematic waves. An experiment with the geometry of Hintereisferner, Austria, shows that the increase in the local ice velocity during a kinematic wave is about 10% but varies slightly depending on the position along the glacier and the amplitude of the kinematic wave. Kinematic waves are thus hard to detect from velocity measurements. -from Authors