Ice-shelf flexure and tidal forcing of Bindschadler Ice Stream, West Antarctica

•We construct a viscoelastic model of ice shelf/stream response to tidal forcing.•The magnitude and timing of response depend significantly on bed rheology.•Elasticity dominates, so the rate of applied stress controls the velocity response.•The model agrees reasonably with GPS observations of Bindschadler Ice Stream.

Viscoelastic models of ice-shelf flexure and ice-stream velocity perturbations are combined into a single efficient flowline model to study tidal forcing of grounded ice. The magnitude and timing of ice-stream response to tidally driven changes in hydrostatic pressure and/or basal drag are found to depend significantly on bed rheology, with only a perfectly plastic bed allowing instantaneous velocity response at the grounding line. The model can reasonably reproduce GPS observations near the grounding zone of Bindschadler Ice Stream (formerly Ice Stream D) on semidiurnal time scales; however, other forcings such as tidally driven ice-shelf slope transverse to the flowline and flexurally driven till deformation must also be considered if diurnal motion is to be matched.