Sea-glacier flow in frozen worlds

The rheology of thick sea ice (sea-glacier) has not been considered in major GCMs, although it may have an important role in some extreme climate regimes, such as the "Snowball Earth" and some extrasolar planets. Dust accumulation and transportion into tropics by the planetary-scale ice flow, has been proposed as a possible machanism for the termination of Neoproterozoic "Snowball Earth". We use a simple ice flow model to simulate the ice thickness and flow on a globally glaciated Earth, and study the dust transport associated with the ice flow. Results show that the ice flow acts as a "dust conveyor belt" which carries dust to tropics and significantly enhances the dust accumulation there. Using the model, we also show that ice flow can also have significant effects on some plausible habitable-zone extrasolar planets. Being of little importance when studying current climate, however, a GCM coupled with the ice flow model can have a better ability to simulate the frozen worlds.