How does the ice sheet surface mass balance relate to snowfall? Insights from a ground-based precipitation radar in East Antarctica

Souverijns, Niels; Gossart, Alexandra; Gorodetskaya, Irina V.; Lhermitte, Stef; Mangold, Alexander; Laffineur, Quentin; Delcloo, Andy; van Lipzig, Nicole P. M.

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-12-1987-2018

Articles | Volume 12, issue 6

https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-12-1987-2018

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

https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-12-1987-2018

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

Articles | Volume 12, issue 6

Research article

|

12 Jun 2018

Research article |

| 12 Jun 2018

How does the ice sheet surface mass balance relate to snowfall? Insights from a ground-based precipitation radar in East Antarctica

Niels Souverijns, Alexandra Gossart, Irina V. Gorodetskaya, Stef Lhermitte, Alexander Mangold, Quentin Laffineur, Andy Delcloo, and Nicole P. M. van Lipzig

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Final revised paper (published on 12 Jun 2018)
Supplement to the final revised paper
Preprint (discussion started on 04 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: 'Review', Anonymous Referee #1, 31 Jan 2018
- AC1: 'Response to reviewer 1', Niels Souverijns, 22 Mar 2018
RC2: 'Anonymous review of Souverijns et al. TCD (2018)', Anonymous Referee #2, 01 Feb 2018
- AC2: 'Response to reviewer 2', Niels Souverijns, 22 Mar 2018

Peer-review completion

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

AR by Niels Souverijns on behalf of the Authors (22 Mar 2018) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Referee Nomination & Report Request started (04 May 2018) by Robert Arthern

RR by Anonymous Referee #1 (11 May 2018)

RR by Anonymous Referee #2 (26 May 2018)

Suggestions for revision or reasons for rejection

The authors modified and greatly improved their manuscript. I suggest publication of the paper after only two minor corrections which are not altering the general quality of the results.
1. In their response, the authors write that in the analysis of Libois et al. (2014), sastrugis are associated to high peaks in snow height measurements lasting only a few hours, which should disappear if a running mean of 24 hours is applied on the hourly snow height measurements. => if the authors look more accurately to Figure 2 from Libois et al. (2014), with a focus on surface height variations in august/September 2012, they will observe that the sonic gauge proposes 1) a significant snow height increase, 2) constant values during a few day 3) a significant decrease of the surface (erosion). These events are probably due to the movement of sastrugis, which likely stopped moving below the sonic gauge during a few day and then was eroded again. The authors acknowledge that 3 reptation events may impact their results but conclude that: “Apart from this, temporary peaks (i.e. with a strong decay within 48 hours) in the snow height records are excluded from the analysis”. I suggest that the authors smooth their comment and write that a 24 hour running mean should remove the “majority” of peaks associated to the motion of sastrugis. Nevertheless, few events may also be related to artefacts caused by the motion of sastrugis.
2. the authors write that “Since the magnitude of the two sublimation terms is small over the PE station, the uncertainty on the ERds component is mainly determined by the uncertainty of the snowfall estimate”. However, the cumulative Sublimation and ERds values are in the same range of magnitude. As a consequence, significant uncertainty in Sublimation can impact significantly the ERds values. Many papers discuss the uncertainty of surface sublimation (e.g. bliss et al., 2011). Getting the uncertainty of the SUds term is more complex but may be discussed using results from RACMO2.3 model => I suggest that the authors indicate an uncertainty range for both sublimation terms, or give values (or statistics) of each term for several typical events demonstrating that ERds is determined by snowfall estimate.

Reference:
Bliss, A. K., Cuffey, K. M., and Kavanaugh, J. L.: Sublimation and surface energy budget of Taylor Glacier, Antarctica, Journal of Glaciology, 57, 684–696, https://doi.org/10.3189/002214311797409767, 2011.

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ED: Publish subject to technical corrections (29 May 2018) by Robert Arthern

Dear Niels,

First apologies for the delay in attending to this manuscript. I have now had a chance to study the reviewers comments on the original submission and on the revised version. I am very happy to report that the revised manuscript will be suitable for publication in The Cryosphere, after a few minor modifications. Thank you for the efforts put in to the new revised version. Both referees have indicated that these efforts have addressed their concerns, apart from a few very minor modifications that they would still like to see. Please address these in an updated version. Below, I have included a few suggestions of my own, most of which are related to spelling, grammar or clarity. Congratulations on this work. This is an impressive contribution to understanding the factors that control the surface mass balance of Antarctica.

Many thanks,

Robert Arthern

Note that the Vaughan et al. 1999 dataset does not just include stake observations, but snowpits and ice cores, beta-activity horizons etc.

Suggest replacing ‘stake measurements registering only the total change in snow height’ with ‘stake and other measurements that register only the total change in snow height’

I suggest removing “/” notation in the following for clarity. “In this study we focus on the relation / interactions between snowfall and accumulation in order to understand / assess the local SMB components in more detail.” This notation appears very often in the manuscript, but it would be best to minimise its use as much as possible.

Change “Furthermore, a constrain on the uncertainty” to “Furthermore, a constraint on the uncertainty”.

Change “snowfall / accumulation / ablation” to “snowfall, accumulation or ablation” or perhaps “snowfall or accumulation/ablation”

Change “parametrised by a self-constructed index” to “parametrised by an index we construct”

Change “apart that snowfall events of a longer duration have a higher chance to attain for accumulation” to “except that snowfall events of a longer duration have a higher chance to attain accumulation”.

The wording “attain for” is used many times, but this is not very commonly used in English and could perhaps cause some confusion. Often alternatives “produce”, “generate”, “result in” or “account for” might be more appropriate. Sometimes “attain” rather than “attain for” would be better.

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AR by Niels Souverijns on behalf of the Authors (30 May 2018) Author's response Manuscript

Short summary

This work is the first to gain insight into the local surface mass balance over Antarctica using accurate long-term snowfall observations. A non-linear relationship between accumulation and snowfall is discovered, indicating that total surface mass balance measurements are not a good proxy for snowfall over Antarctica. Furthermore, the meteorological drivers causing changes in the local SMB are identified.