Are marine glaciers melting quicker under ocean turbulence? Insights from homogeneous isotropic turbulence laboratory experiments.

We present a set of simultaneous flow and temperature field measurements next to a melting vertical ice face. These experiments were done inside a 2.4m-by-1m-by-0.3m (L x H x W) water tank in which an ice block (1m tall, 0.3m wide and 0.075m thick) was placed at one end of the tank . A combined system of two-color LIF and planar PIV were used to measure the temperature and flow fields, respectively, at different heights of the ice block. Different background (ocean) turbulence levels were created inside the tank using the random-jet-array approach; 48 water bilge pumps arranged on a vertical grid were fired randomly in space and time. Our goal is to study the dependence of the background melt rate on the four parameters: (1) ambient temperature T_a, (2) ice temperature T_ice, (3) turbulent intensity u_rms, and (4) integral length scale L. Further, we compare our measured data with the theoretical model suggested by Wells and Worster (2008, JFM).