Reconstruction of basal properties in ice sheets using iterative inverse methods.

The article discusses the implementation of iterative inverse methods for the particular problems of reconstructing ice sheet basal stickiness with the use of the shallow-shelf approximation as a forward model. The incomplete Gauss-Newton (IGN) method is used and equated to the commonly used nonlinear conjugate gradient and steepest descent methods. The IGN method is preferred because it is converging rapidly and it integrates the discrepancy principle which results to optimally resolved solutions.