The Initialization Of Basal Sliding Coefficients For Antarctica A Lyapunov Based Approach

Models describing natural phenomena can depend on parameters that cannot be directly measured, hence the necessity to develop inverse techniques to determine them. The goal of this paper is to utilize such a technique to enable better initialization of ice sheet models for Antarctica. This will enable models to produce better forecasts as part of climate studies. The parameter of interest is the basal sliding coefficient, which characterizes the contact of the ice sheet with the bed underneath. A Lyapunov based approach is proposed to control the convergence of the 1D inhomogeneous transport model toward a feasible equilibrium matching the measurements. This method results in a new update law for the coefficient inversion. The results, which show an improved convergence toward the observed ice thickness, are compared with a currently used inverse method.