Calculating area for a modeled outlet glacier

schbt

Hi there,
This might be a silly question but I am genuinely stuck. I am trying to calculate two values from a 2D Greenland outlet glacier model, the glacier's surface area and area of the submerged calving front, but I can't figure out how to go about this with the ISSM model mesh or find a place where this these kinds of variables are already calculated. I would really appreciate any advice or pointers on the best way to calculate these fields.
Thanks,
-Schmitty

mathieumorlighem

Hello @schbt

For the glacier surface area, you can take the sum of the surface areas of all the elements that have ice? Something like this:

% Get areas of all triangles
areas  =GetAreas(md.mesh.elements,md.mesh.x,md.mesh.y);

%flag elements that have ice
isice = min(md.mask.ice_levelset(md.mesh.elements),[],2)<0;

%sum areas of elements that have ice
sum(areas(find(isice)))

For the submerged area at calving faces it is going to need a bit more work... you can maybe use "isoline" which gives you a list of segments along the ice front and use the bed depth to do the integration?

contours=isoline(md, md.mask.ice_levelset, 'output','matrix');

Good luck!
Mathieu