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Abstract

Wave erosion of ice cliffs is one of the main mechanisms for waterline ice melt for icebergs, glacier fronts, and ice-shelf fronts. Despite its importance, this process is fundamentally not well understood or extensively tested in controlled experiments, and therefore coarsely parameterized in geophysical and climate models. In this study, we examine the melting of a vertical ice wall caused by surface waves using both theory and laboratory experiments, with an emphasis on the flow-induced heat transport in the theory and measurements of the melt rate profile under different wave conditions in the experiments. In both the theory and the experiments, we find that there is enhanced melting near the surface that decays with depth. Via an analysis the oscillatory boundary layer flow, we find that an approximate, leading-order, wave-averaged balance of heat transport is given by the vertical advection due to an Eulerian boundary layer streaming current and horizontal diffusion. By solving for this balance and obtaining the wave-averaged temperature field, we find an explicit expression for the wave-induced melt rate. Experimental data show a good match to this expression, especially for larger wave amplitudes and colder water temperatures, though we find that the ambient melt can be a significant contributor to the waterline melt rate.