How much cryosphere model complexity is just right? Exploration using the conceptual cryosphere hydrology framework

Mosier, Thomas M.; Hill, David F.; Sharp, Kendra V.

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-10-2147-2016

Articles | Volume 10, issue 5

https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-10-2147-2016

© Author(s) 2016. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-10-2147-2016

© Author(s) 2016. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.

Articles | Volume 10, issue 5

Research article

|

20 Sep 2016

Research article |

| 20 Sep 2016

How much cryosphere model complexity is just right? Exploration using the conceptual cryosphere hydrology framework

Thomas M. Mosier, David F. Hill, and Kendra V. Sharp

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Final revised paper (published on 20 Sep 2016)
Preprint (discussion started on 24 Feb 2016)

Interactive discussion

Status: closed

AC: Author comment | RC: Referee comment | SC: Short comment | EC: Editor comment

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RC1: 'intriguing title - disappointing content', Anonymous Referee #1, 03 Apr 2016
RC2: 'Review', Anonymous Referee #2, 04 May 2016
AC1: 'response to reviewer comments', Thomas Mosier, 01 Aug 2016

Peer-review completion

AR: Author's response | RR: Referee report | ED: Editor decision

AR by Thomas Mosier on behalf of the Authors (01 Aug 2016) Manuscript

ED: Referee Nomination & Report Request started (04 Aug 2016) by Valentina Radic

RR by Anonymous Referee #2 (19 Aug 2016)

ED: Publish subject to minor revisions (Editor review) (22 Aug 2016) by Valentina Radic

Dear authors,

Your revised manuscript has been sent for a second round of reviews. By now I have received the comments from one of the reviewers (see below). Based on the received review your manuscript will be acceptable for publication after some minor revisions are implemented. Please upload on the system your rebuttal letter and the revised manuscript.

Thank you,
Valentina

Review:

The authors have substantially revised their analysis and the manuscript. The MODIS evaluation procedure is significantly improved by comparing the spatial SCA patterns instead of spatial averages and by excluding glacier pixels from the analysis. Also the one-watershed validation assessment is very insightful due to the contrasting results with the proxy-basin tests. All of my initial comments have been addressed and I recommend publishing the manuscript in TC subject to a few technical corrections:

- Abstract, L1-2: possibly avoid the word "scenarios" (2x), as I assume you refer to the changing climate itself and not to climate (change) scenarios
- P12 L8: c_hoc,s and c_hoc,i do not appear in eq. (9)
- P13 L13: "where the negative bound on w_c is zero" -> possibly move this part a few lines up (after eq. (14) where w_c is introduced); replace "negative bound" with "lower bound"
- P20 L14: missing parentheses around citations
- P20 L29: typo in "cyrosphere"
- Tables B3, B4, B5: "one minus the PBE or KGE score" is a bit misleading (I interpret this that one minus PBE or one minus KGE are shown, whereas in fact - if I understand correctly - one minus PBE, or KGE (without one minus) are shown?) - possibly reformulate this.

General remark: the parts that were changed in the manuscript are highlighted in the revised version, but to determine what exactly had been changed I had to compare it with the original manuscript (additionally, some changed parts are not highlighted, e.g. P2 L18-34, P16 L13-18, P18 L2-10). For the future I would recommend to use latexdiff or similar tools to mark the changes.

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AR by Thomas Mosier on behalf of the Authors (25 Aug 2016) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Publish subject to technical corrections (30 Aug 2016) by Valentina Radic

AR by Thomas Mosier on behalf of the Authors (02 Sep 2016) Manuscript

Short summary

Our paper presents the Conceptual Cryosphere Hydrology Framework (CCHF), a tool to enable more rapid development and intercomparison of cryosphere process representations. Using the CCHF, we demonstrate that some common existing degree index cryosphere models are not well suited for assessing impacts across climates, even though these models appear to perform well under a common evaluation strategy. We show that more robust models can be formulated without increasing data input requirements.