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Updated: Mar 17, 2026

Simulating Impacts of Ice Storms on Forest Ecosystems
Published on: June 30, 2020
Stochastic ice stream dynamics
Elisa Mantelli1, Matteo Bernard Bertagni2, Luca Ridolfi2
1Department of Environment, Land and Infrastructure Engineering, Politecnico di Torino, 10129 Turin, Italy elisa.mantelli@polito.it.
Abstract:
Ice streams are narrow corridors of fast-flowing ice that constitute the arterial drainage network of ice sheets. Therefore, changes in ice stream flow are key to understanding paleoclimate, sea level changes, and rapid disintegration of ice sheets during deglaciation. The dynamics of ice flow are tightly coupled to the climate system through atmospheric temperature and snow recharge, which are known exhibit stochastic variability. Here we focus on the interplay between stochastic climate forcing and ice stream temporal dynamics. Our work demonstrates that realistic climate fluctuations are able to (i) induce the coexistence of dynamic behaviors that would be incompatible in a purely deterministic system and (ii) drive ice stream flow away from the regime expected in a steady climate. We conclude that environmental noise appears to be crucial to interpreting the past behavior of ice sheets, as well as to predicting their future evolution.
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