Iron oxides in the cryoconite of glaciers on the Tibetan Plateau: abundance, speciation and implications

Cong, Zhiyuan; Gao, Shaopeng; Zhao, Wancang; Wang, Xin; Wu, Guangming; Zhang, Yulan; Kang, Shichang; Liu, Yongqin; Ji, Junfeng

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-12-3177-2018

Articles | Volume 12, issue 10

https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-12-3177-2018

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

https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-12-3177-2018

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

Articles | Volume 12, issue 10

Research article

|

05 Oct 2018

Research article |

| 05 Oct 2018

Iron oxides in the cryoconite of glaciers on the Tibetan Plateau: abundance, speciation and implications

Zhiyuan Cong, Shaopeng Gao, Wancang Zhao, Xin Wang, Guangming Wu, Yulan Zhang, Shichang Kang, Yongqin Liu, and Junfeng Ji

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Final revised paper (published on 05 Oct 2018)
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Preprint (discussion started on 25 May 2018)
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Interactive discussion

Status: closed

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

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RC1: 'Review of the manuscript entitled “Iron oxides in the cryoconite on the glaciers over Tibetan Plateau: abundance, speciation and implications”', Anonymous Referee #1, 04 Jun 2018
- AC1: 'Response to Referee #1', Zhiyuan Cong, 01 Jul 2018
RC2: 'Revision of the paper by Cong et al.', Anonymous Referee #2, 02 Jul 2018
- AC2: 'Response to the comments by Referee #2', Zhiyuan Cong, 20 Jul 2018

Peer-review completion

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

AR by Zhiyuan Cong on behalf of the Authors (22 Jul 2018) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Referee Nomination & Report Request started (03 Aug 2018) by Becky Alexander

RR by Anonymous Referee #1 (13 Aug 2018)

Suggestions for revision or reasons for rejection

The revised version of the manuscript shows a clear improvement with respect to the first one, in particular dealing with the methodological sections that are now clear and accurate. I can now recommend the publication of the present manuscript. I just made very secondary comments about the language and some details. The only thing that I would like to be furtherly improved is the language of the abstract and of the conclusion section. The latter are probably the most important parts of a paper, the ones that the more readers will read. Now their language is not very clear and there are some evident grammatical errors. The authors should ameliorate them, also asking help to some mother tongue colleague.

Best regards

Page1

Line 17: “Cryoconite is the mixture by incoherent impurities and ice with dark color presented in the
ablation zone of glacier”, change to “Cryoconite is the mixture composed by impurities with dark color and ice that forms on the ablation zone of glacier”

Line19: “and thus its impact on ice melting processes”

Line 20: you don’t say here that hematite and goethite are both iron oxides.

Page2

Line4: “The composition of LAIs is particularly complex when considering mountain glaciers from the Himalaya and from the Tibetan Plateau (TP) (Fig.1).

Line8: “to the black carbon content of cryoconite…”

Line9: “because the glaciated areas of the TP are in the…”

Line10: “has focused” be aware of the verbs, sometimes you use present, sometimes past participle. Check across the entire paper and make everything uniform.

Page3

Line10: please cite the studies you are talking about

Line14: “an area OF, a length OF…”

Line 22-24: this passage is not very clear

Page7:

Line37: “an indicator of high microbial activity”

Table 2: Baccolo et al. 2017 provided some data about total Fe concentration in cryoconite from the Alps. It ranged from 2.7 % to 5.5% with a mean value of 4.0 ± 0.7, in good agreement with the results from the present work. The authors could consider adding this data to Table 2.

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ED: Publish subject to minor revisions (review by editor) (14 Aug 2018) by Becky Alexander

AR by Zhiyuan Cong on behalf of the Authors (23 Aug 2018) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Publish as is (06 Sep 2018) by Becky Alexander

AR by Zhiyuan Cong on behalf of the Authors (07 Sep 2018)

Short summary

Cryoconites from glaciers on the Tibetan Plateau and surrounding area were studied for iron oxides. We found that goethite is the predominant iron oxide form. Using the abundance, speciation and optical properties of iron oxides, the total light absorption was quantitatively attributed to goethite, hematite, black carbon and organic matter. Such findings are essential to understand the relative significance of anthropogenic and natural impacts.