Coupling ice flow models of varying orders of complexity with the Tiling method.

The article presents the Tiling method to couple ice flow models of different orders of complexity. The goal of the method is to determine the spatial extent of where higher-order models are used to lessen the computational cost while retaining the model precision. A geometry for which all models yield similar results is used to examine the consistency of the method and a geometry where a full-Stokes model is needed in the vicinity of the ice front is used. The results reveal that the hybrid models show important improvements over mono-model approaches and lessen computational times.