Annual snow layers in the accumulation zone of glaciers become thinner by viscous deformation while moving to greater depth. The reconstruction of the accumulation rate history requires the correction of the thickness of annual layers. We apply a novel method to determine the vertical velocity by repeated survey with a caliper probe of grooves scratched into the wall of a borehole. With this information and the assumptions of steady state velocity and density fields, the correction of layer thicknesses can be determined without knowledge of the ice density profile and thus can be applied to boreholes without ice cores. The method is applied to a borehole on Fiescherhorn, Swiss Alps, resulting in a substantially larger correction than with the simpler method of Nye (1963). Copyright 2006 by the American Geophysical Union.

Item Type:	Refereed Article
Research Division:	Earth Sciences
Research Group:	Physical geography and environmental geoscience
Research Field:	Glaciology
Objective Division:	Environmental Policy, Climate Change and Natural Hazards
Objective Group:	Understanding climate change
Objective Field:	Climate variability (excl. social impacts)
UTAS Author:	Palmer, AS (Dr Anne Palmer)
ID Code:	43021
Year Published:	2006
Web of Science® Times Cited:	15
Deposited By:	Chemistry
Deposited On:	2006-08-01
Last Modified:	2011-11-07
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