Multi-component ensembles of future meteorological and natural snow conditions for 1500&thinsp;m altitude in the Chartreuse  mountain range, Northern French Alps

Verfaillie, Deborah; Lafaysse, Matthieu; Déqué, Michel; Eckert, Nicolas; Lejeune, Yves; Morin, Samuel

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-12-1249-2018

Articles | Volume 12, issue 4

https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-12-1249-2018

© Author(s) 2018. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-12-1249-2018

© Author(s) 2018. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 12, issue 4

Research article

|

10 Apr 2018

Research article |

| 10 Apr 2018

Multi-component ensembles of future meteorological and natural snow conditions for 1500 m altitude in the Chartreuse mountain range, Northern French Alps

Deborah Verfaillie, Matthieu Lafaysse, Michel Déqué, Nicolas Eckert, Yves Lejeune, and Samuel Morin

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Final revised paper (published on 10 Apr 2018)
Supplement to the final revised paper
Preprint (discussion started on 01 Dec 2017)
Supplement to the preprint

Interactive discussion

Status: closed

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

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- Supplement

RC1: 'A comprehensive study of past and future snow indicators in a French mountain range', Anonymous Referee #1, 03 Jan 2018
- AC1: 'Reply to Reviewer #1 comments', Samuel Morin, 12 Feb 2018
RC2: 'Review of “Multi-components ensembles of future meteorological and natural snow conditions in the Northern French Alps” by Verfaillie et al.', Anonymous Referee #2, 15 Jan 2018
- AC2: 'Reply to Reviewer #2 comments', Samuel Morin, 12 Feb 2018

Peer-review completion

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

AR by Samuel Morin on behalf of the Authors (12 Feb 2018) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Referee Nomination & Report Request started (13 Feb 2018) by Ross Brown

RR by Anonymous Referee #2 (26 Feb 2018)

RR by Anonymous Referee #1 (10 Mar 2018)

Suggestions for revision or reasons for rejection

I appreciate most of the changes introduced by the authors into the revised version of their manuscript. Moving Tables 3 and 5 to the supplement certainly streamlines the presentation. However, I’m sorry to say that the replies to my few major comments and the respective revisions are not satisfying in my opinion. As said before, the paper is a very valuable piece of work. But the amount of information presented is (too?) large, and physical interpretations of the results are largely missing. Also the representativeness of the work and its transferability, as suggested by the title of the manuscript that takes a very broad perspective, is not yet addressed convincingly. Yes, the paper has a length issue, but rebutting required improvements with the only argument of length constraints, although several suggestions were provided to cut down the length, is not convincing to me. Please find a summary of these issues below. I believe incorporating at least some of the suggested changes would strongly enhance the quality and the significance of the work. As the paper itself is a valid contribution, I’d leave it up to the editor to decide if further revisions are necessary or not.

With kind regards.

Representativeness: As outlined in my first review, a broader geographical validity of the results is not given per se. This is especially true for elevation-dependent processes. The point-scale application for a specific elevation in a specific massif is valuable, but it is a case study as long as no arguments for a broader significance are provided. Neither in their replies nor in the paper itself the authors provide such arguments. They claim a broader applicability of the results, at least for similar altitudinal levels, but without providing their lines of thought. This would be fine as long as this restriction would be properly reflected by the paper’s title. However, the current title implies a much broader significance (“in the Northern French Alps”) than is currently provided.

Physical processes: Also in the revised version, the processes that are actually leading to the projected snow cover changes and that are associated with different kinds of uncertainties are basically not discussed. The mentioned analysis of temperature and precipitation phases is reflected by as few as 3 to 4 sentences in Chapter 3.3. The arguments of the authors to focus on the relation to GLOBAL temperature changes are not convincing in my opinion. First of all, the underlying processes should be identified. A relation to global warming targets could be a follow up, but not the other way round.

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ED: Publish subject to minor revisions (review by editor) (14 Mar 2018) by Ross Brown

Dear Authors - I have received the referee reports of your revised manuscript and am pleased to accept your paper for publication subject to your response to the corrections and comments noted by the two reviewers. Both reviewers noted major improvements in the m/s but Reviewer 2 has some remaining concerns that I would like you to respond to (for Editor review). I look forward to your response. In reading your Conclusions I noticed some minor language issues that I've itemized below. Reviewer 1 also mentioned finding the writing style difficult to follow in places so it would be good if you can get a technical editor to go through the paper before submitting the final version.

1. Note missing "it" on p. 30 line 8 "... we consider [it] preferable to ...'

2. p. 30 lines 10-13: This sentence is incomprehensible as written. I suggest you split this into two bullets addressing (1) the trajectory of changes with RCPs, and (2) interannual variability. The next bullet starting in line 15 relates to (1) so you can consider consolidate the RCP-related conclusions in one bullet.

3. p. 30 line 19: "...show significant correlation[s] with ..."

4. p. 30 line 21: "... for [a] 1.5C global temperature..."

5. p 30 line 33: consider replacing "...making it possible to compute Crocus snowpack model runs able to tackle avalanche hazard evolution,..." with " making it possible to simulate the evolution of avalanche hazard with Crocus, ..."

6. p 31 lines 8-10: consider simplifying the phrase "Conversely, it is re-emphasized here that, while changes in natural snow conditions as projected in this work are likely to affect operating conditions of ski resorts, no quantitative conclusions can be made, given that snow management practices induce significant changes in operating conditions, which depend on intricate[d] factors related to temperature and precipitation..."

Suggestion...

"It must be emphasized that while the projected changes in natural snow conditions shown in this work are likely to affect operating conditions of ski resorts, no quantitative conclusions can be made as snow management practices, especially the production of artficial snow, depend on an intricate set of temperature and precipitation related sensitivities..."

7. p 31 lines 12-13: The follow phrase is a rather bizarre and unnecessary "... mechanistic derivations of the impact of meteorological conditions on the socio-ecosystemic compartment under investigation". I suggest you remove it.

Best regards, Ross Brown (ed.)

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AR by Samuel Morin on behalf of the Authors (15 Mar 2018) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Publish as is (16 Mar 2018) by Ross Brown

AR by Samuel Morin on behalf of the Authors (19 Mar 2018)

Short summary

This article addresses local changes of seasonal snow and its meteorological drivers, at 1500 m altitude in the Chartreuse mountain range in the Northern French Alps, for the period 1960–2100. We use an ensemble of adjusted RCM outputs consistent with IPCC AR5 GCM outputs (RCPs 2.6, 4.5 and 8.5) and the snowpack model Crocus. Beyond scenario-based approach, global temperature levels on the order of 1.5 °C and 2 °C above preindustrial levels correspond to 25 and 32% reduction of mean snow depth.