The current state and 125&thinsp;kyr history of permafrost on the Kara Sea shelf: modeling constraints

Gavrilov, Anatoliy; Pavlov, Vladimir; Fridenberg, Alexandr; Boldyrev, Mikhail; Khilimonyuk, Vanda; Pizhankova, Elena; Buldovich, Sergey; Kosevich, Natalia; Alyautdinov, Ali; Ogienko, Mariia; Roslyakov, Alexander; Cherbunina, Maria; Ospennikov, Evgeniy

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-14-1857-2020

Articles | Volume 14, issue 6

https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-14-1857-2020

© Author(s) 2020. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-14-1857-2020

© Author(s) 2020. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 14, issue 6

Research article

|

11 Jun 2020

Research article |

| 11 Jun 2020

The current state and 125 kyr history of permafrost on the Kara Sea shelf: modeling constraints

Anatoliy Gavrilov, Vladimir Pavlov, Alexandr Fridenberg, Mikhail Boldyrev, Vanda Khilimonyuk, Elena Pizhankova, Sergey Buldovich, Natalia Kosevich, Ali Alyautdinov, Mariia Ogienko, Alexander Roslyakov, Maria Cherbunina, and Evgeniy Ospennikov

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Final revised paper (published on 11 Jun 2020)
Supplement to the final revised paper
Preprint (discussion started on 21 Aug 2019)

Interactive discussion

Status: closed

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

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- Supplement

RC1: 'Review of tc-2019-112: The Current State and 125 Kyr History of Permafrost in the Kara Sea Shelf: Modeling Constraints', Anonymous Referee #1, 10 Dec 2019
- AC1: 'Response to RC 1. tc-2019-112', Mariia Ogienko, 14 Jan 2020
RC2: 'review', Anonymous Referee #2, 14 Jan 2020
- AC2: ''Response to RC 2. tc-2019-112', Maria Cherbunina, 22 Jan 2020

Peer-review completion

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

ED: Reconsider after major revisions (further review by editor and referees) (27 Jan 2020) by Christian Hauck

AR by Maria Cherbunina on behalf of the Authors (07 Mar 2020) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Referee Nomination & Report Request started (10 Mar 2020) by Christian Hauck

RR by Anonymous Referee #1 (19 Mar 2020)

RR by Anonymous Referee #2 (31 Mar 2020)

Suggestions for revision or reasons for rejection

Authors showed a great effort to address reviewers' comments. However, a fewassumptions could be better clarified.

Major comments:
1. Lines 89-93: I am afraid the following is not easily reproducible by other researchers: “Then the modeling results were extrapolated to complex sections that comprise alternating reference lithologies or different combinations of relatively thick layers. We consider two cases to extrapolate our results: In the first case, we consider the uniform alternation of homogeneous layers with a relatively low thickness (relative to the total thickness of the permafrost). The linear interpolation is simply performed in accordance with the percentage of the thickness of frozen ground obtained during modeling for two ―pure‖ soils at a given moment.”

Please make a more precise and explicit description and verification of the proposed procedure. Details could be added to the supplemental material

2. I could not find where the initial ground temperature distribution is given in the manuscript. The newly provided supplement indicates that the ground was thawed (no permafrost). Why was it assumed so? How would the modeling results differ if some permafrost was preserved 120kya?

Minor comments:
1. Line 79: Please provide a reference to “the explicit two-layer scheme“
2. Line 79: Please provide a reference to “the balance method”
3. Please try to combine figures 5 and 7. I think it would be reasonable thing to do.
4. Move figure 8 close to the introduction, prior to the development of the paleo scenarios.
5. Move figure 6 closer to the introduction as well. Modeling results should not be combined with the data driven figures. You provided a good justification for assuming a salt contaminated ground across the modeling domain in the responses to the reviewers. Please copy-paste it to the manuscript, in the current copy of the manuscript it is still a rather cryptic note.
6. Mark locations of the map that correspond to the scenarios in Figures 5 and 7
7. In Table 1, add years when the ice-dammed lake existed.

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ED: Publish subject to minor revisions (review by editor) (03 Apr 2020) by Christian Hauck

AR by Maria Cherbunina on behalf of the Authors (12 Apr 2020) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Publish subject to technical corrections (28 Apr 2020) by Christian Hauck

AR by Maria Cherbunina on behalf of the Authors (03 May 2020) Author's response Manuscript

Short summary

The geocryological study of the Arctic shelf remains insufficient for economic activity. The article presents a study of its evolution by methods of math modeling of heat transfer in rocks. As a result, a model of the evolution and current state of the cryolithozone of the Kara shelf was created based on ideas about the history of its geocryological development over the past 125 kyr. The modeling results are correlated to the available field data and are presented as a geocryological map.