Basal melt of marine terminating glaciers is a key uncertainty in predicting the future climate and the evolution of the Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets. Regional ocean circulation models use parameterizations that depend on the available heat to parameterize basal melt. The heat budget at the ice–ocean interface includes turbulent heat flux from the ocean below, latent heat for phase transition, and heat conduction into the ice. Here we review the estimation of heat conduction into the ice, which has been treated in various ways in modelling studies so far. We show that the formulation of Holland and Jenkins (1999) best captures the variety of temperature profiles measured in boreholes. Accounting for heat conduction into the ice reduces melt rates by up to 28 %.