Physical properties of shallow ice cores from Antarctic and sub-Antarctic islands

Thomas, Elizabeth Ruth; Gacitúa, Guisella; Pedro, Joel B.; Faith King, Amy Constance; Markle, Bradley; Potocki, Mariusz; Moser, Dorothea Elisabeth

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-15-1173-2021

Articles | Volume 15, issue 2

https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-15-1173-2021

© Author(s) 2021. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-15-1173-2021

© Author(s) 2021. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 15, issue 2

Research article

|

03 Mar 2021

Research article |

| 03 Mar 2021

Physical properties of shallow ice cores from Antarctic and sub-Antarctic islands

Elizabeth Ruth Thomas, Guisella Gacitúa, Joel B. Pedro, Amy Constance Faith King, Bradley Markle, Mariusz Potocki, and Dorothea Elisabeth Moser

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Final revised paper (published on 03 Mar 2021)
Supplement to the final revised paper
Preprint (discussion started on 24 Jun 2020)

Interactive discussion

Status: closed

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

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- Supplement

RC1: 'Review_HC', Howard Conway, 30 Jun 2020
- AC1: 'Response to reviewer 1', Elizabeth Thomas, 28 Sep 2020
RC2: 'Review of “Physical properties of shallow ice cores from Antarctic and sub-Antarctic islands”', Anonymous Referee #2, 15 Jul 2020
- AC2: 'Response to reviewer 2', Elizabeth Thomas, 28 Sep 2020

Peer-review completion

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

ED: Publish subject to revisions (further review by editor and referees) (08 Oct 2020) by Adam Booth

AR by Elizabeth Thomas on behalf of the Authors (19 Nov 2020) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Publish subject to revisions (further review by editor and referees) (07 Dec 2020) by Adam Booth

ED: Referee Nomination & Report Request started (04 Jan 2021) by Adam Booth

RR by Howard Conway (04 Jan 2021)

RR by Anonymous Referee #2 (05 Jan 2021)

Suggestions for revision or reasons for rejection

The manuscript by Thomas et al. is much improved on the previous version and was a very enjoyable read. I have just a handful of minor comments to finesse the structure, flow and readability of figures, after which I would recommend it for publication.
L2 and throughout: Unsure why there is now an apostrophe in “island’s”? I don’t think this is needed in almost all cases.
L22: “data were collected”
L69-70: one terminus or several termini? I’m also unclear about the phrase “ice ages of between…” – are you referring to the age of the ice (if so, how from plateaus?) or perhaps the last glacial maximum?
L121: 3,110 m above sea level?
L185: “data are”
L192-194: Any references to support these values and your particular choice?
L207: “ice core extraction site”?
L210: Bedrock description is repetitive of L205
L219: “were these” should be deleted, I think
L246: “altitude corrected” should be “elevation-corrected” – particularly as you use elevation in all later instances
L271: “melt observations … have”
L276: How do you determine which sections would have a strong enough reflection? In addition, while I see why you have included this and the next (misnumbered) section here, it would make more sense to put the methodological parts into the Methods, and present the actual results here.
L277: Figure 7 has not yet been mentioned? I assume it is coming later, so these two figures should be swapped in order
L294-317: Most of this section is interpretations, and should thus be in the Discussion section
L365: “sites” needs an apostrophe
L392-404: Suggest merging these paragraphs, as the second continues on from the first
L450-452: This paragraph either needs some context/discussion, or to be moved to the Results
Figure 1: This is much easier to visualise now, thank you. Just one comment that the scale bars (and coordinates on some panels?) are still too small to read – perhaps pull them out and have them underneath each panel so that they can be larger but not obscure any of the images. The placename fonts on each of these panels also needs to be large enough to read – one way to do this would be to make all the panels much larger.
Figures 2-6: Thanks again – these are also much easier to interpret. The resolution is a little fuzzy on my document – but this could be the download, and it doesn’t preclude ability to see layers you have depicted. Just querying why the picked lines are black in all except Figure 4? Either is fine, but continuity between similar figures is always nice. The panels in Figure 6 would be easier to read if they were a similar size to the previous figure panels – I can’t see/read much at present. Panel 6f is not mentioned in the caption, and I wonder if e and f should be swapped around?

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ED: Publish subject to minor revisions (review by editor) (05 Jan 2021) by Adam Booth

AR by Elizabeth Thomas on behalf of the Authors (14 Jan 2021) Author's response Author's tracked changes Manuscript

ED: Publish as is (18 Jan 2021) by Adam Booth

AR by Elizabeth Thomas on behalf of the Authors (21 Jan 2021) Manuscript

Short summary

Here we present the first-ever radar and ice core data from the sub-Antarctic islands of Bouvet Island, Peter I Island, and Young Island. These islands have the potential to record past climate in one of the most data-sparse regions on earth. Despite their northerly location, surface melting is generally low, and the upper layer of the ice at most sites is undisturbed. We estimate that a 100 m ice core drilled on these islands could capture climate over the past 100–200 years.