The Unsolved General Glacier Sliding Problem

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Abstract
The status of the theory of glacier sliding is reviewed in this paper. The theory of Nye and Kamb essentially solves the problem of glacier sliding when the basal ice is in intimate contact with a non-deformable bed. But experimental work is needed on cyclic creep and the regelation process in order to put better numbers into the theory. The outstanding problem that remains to be solved, called in this paper the general glacier sliding problem, is the case of sliding when basal ice is not in intimate contact with a non-deformable bed because of the presence of cavities and a water film of finite thickness. This problem involves solving an intricately coupled basal water-flow problem. A new field of research is the study of the motion of glaciers over deformable beds.

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