Two-dimensional liquid water flow through snow at the plot scale in continental snowpacks: simulations and field data comparisons

Webb, Ryan W.; Jennings, Keith; Finsterle, Stefan; Fassnacht, Steven R.

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-15-1423-2021

Articles | Volume 15, issue 3

https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-15-1423-2021

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

https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-15-1423-2021

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

Articles | Volume 15, issue 3

Research article

|

19 Mar 2021

Research article |

| 19 Mar 2021

Two-dimensional liquid water flow through snow at the plot scale in continental snowpacks: simulations and field data comparisons

Ryan W. Webb, Keith Jennings, Stefan Finsterle, and Steven R. Fassnacht

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Final revised paper (published on 19 Mar 2021)
Preprint (discussion started on 11 Aug 2020)

Interactive discussion

Status: closed

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

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- Supplement

RC1: 'Review', Nander Wever, 24 Aug 2020
- AC1: 'Initial Response to Wever Review', Ryan Webb, 27 Aug 2020
RC2: 'review', Anonymous Referee #2, 14 Sep 2020
- AC2: 'Response to Reviewer', Ryan Webb, 15 Oct 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) (26 Oct 2020) by Guillaume Chambon

AR by Ryan Webb on behalf of the Authors (18 Dec 2020) Author's response Author's tracked changes Manuscript

ED: Referee Nomination & Report Request started (05 Jan 2021) by Guillaume Chambon

RR by Nander Wever (12 Jan 2021)

Suggestions for revision or reasons for rejection

The authors provided a thoroughly revised manuscript, which can be accepted for publication after taking the comments below into consideration, which are mostly of technical nature.

1) L88/89: "For the IOP simulations, initial conditions were provided through manual snow pit observations (Webb et al., 2020; Webb et al., 2018c)" It's not a trivial task to start SNOWPACK simulations from snow pit observations, since you need parameters such as bond size, sphericity and dendricity, which is typically not available from manual snow pit observations. Please provide more details here.

2) L113: this porosity is very high for typical soil. Is it maybe (1-porosity), i.e., soil volumetric content, that is reported here?

3) L118: To prevent confusion, maybe write: "Similar to the SNOWPACK simulations used for the IOP, ", since there are also the seasonal simulations using SNOWPACK that are not initialized using field observations.

4) L125: "Flowrate calculations for each simulation was calculated for a 1 m x 1 m footprint of hillslope." Awkward sentence, please reformulate.

5) Section 4.1 should offer a more detailed explanation of what can be seen in the figures 2 and 3 (see my comment in my earlier review that figure panels are poorly discussed, which I think is still the case). Examples are to mention dates explicitly when the first wetting can be found in for example the BT site, the simulated capillary/hydraulic barriers for the NT and AT site that impact water flow, etc. Section 4.1 is really short, so there is room to really set the stage and make sure that readers understand how these sites differ in simulated snow cover.

6) L164: grain size or density? I see mostly density changing during melt, not so much grain size. Or do the authors mean that grain size at the surface changes because deeper layers (the one with an ice layer) come at the surface? Or is maybe the color bar not really clear here?

7) L165: "All three sites resulted in simulated diurnal melt cycles" Awkward sentence, please reformulate.

8) L174-175: Something doesn't fit here. After discussing the BT site (which is the lowest of all), the text continues by talking about "These simulations display...", followed by a sentence discussing the high elevation sites. Please rephrase.

9) L174: Figure 5 should be introduced when mentioning the 1.5 ml/s statistic.

10) Fig. 5: Why is Fig. 5ai,bi and ci not depicting the middle of the profile, or at 5m from the top, to make a more meaningful comparison with the plots shown in 5aii,bii and cii?

11) L189: Please mention the specific date for the onset of the storm here to make it easier to compare to the figures.

12) L205: "Comparisons of SnowTOUGH to field observations varied." I assume you mean that the comparisons showed varying results, not that the comparisons varied?

13) Section 4.1/4.2: simulated melt rates are mentioned in Section 4.3, but I think the interpretation of Section 4.2 is helped when melt rates are reported there, to put them in context with the simulated flow rates.

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RR by Hiroyuki Hirashima (18 Jan 2021)

ED: Publish subject to minor revisions (review by editor) (20 Jan 2021) by Guillaume Chambon

AR by Ryan Webb on behalf of the Authors (29 Jan 2021) Author's response Author's tracked changes Manuscript

ED: Publish as is (10 Feb 2021) by Guillaume Chambon

Short summary

We simulate the flow of liquid water through snow and compare results to field experiments. This process is important because it controls how much and how quickly water will reach our streams and rivers in snowy regions. We found that water can flow large distances downslope through the snow even after the snow has stopped melting. Improved modeling of snowmelt processes will allow us to more accurately estimate available water resources, especially under changing climate conditions.