hydropack is a library for modeling subglacial hydrology beneath glaciers and ice sheets using the finite element method. The physics includes both distributed linked-cavity drainage and discrete Röthlisberger channels, following the GlaDS formulation (Werder et al., 2013). Each constitutive relation (closure laws, channel growth, cavity opening, etc.) is exposed as a swappable function, so you can test alternative physics without modifying the solver.
hydropack is built on Firedrake and designed to couple with icepack for ice-flow simulations.
Once you have a working Firedrake installation:
git clone https://github.com/hoffmaao/hydropack.git
cd hydropack
pip install -e .The directory notebooks/ contains tutorial notebooks that walk through the main features:
01 Greenland outlet glacier: distributed sheet drainage, steady-state effective pressure
02 Channels: how Röthlisberger channels emerge at higher melt rates
03 Moulins: concentrated moulin input and channel network structure
04 Mountain glacier: valley geometry, overdeepenings, and glaciohydraulic supercooling
hydropack has been validated against the SHMIP subglacial hydrology model intercomparison (Suites A–F), comparing with the Werder GlaDS MATLAB reference. The SHMIP test scripts are maintained in a separate repository.