Using avalanche problems to examine the effect of large-scale atmosphere–ocean oscillations on avalanche hazard in western Canada

Haegeli, Pascal; Shandro, Bret; Mair, Patrick

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-15-1567-2021

Articles | Volume 15, issue 3

https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-15-1567-2021

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

https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-15-1567-2021

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

Articles | Volume 15, issue 3

Research article

|

29 Mar 2021

Research article |

| 29 Mar 2021

Using avalanche problems to examine the effect of large-scale atmosphere–ocean oscillations on avalanche hazard in western Canada

Pascal Haegeli, Bret Shandro, and Patrick Mair

Download

Final revised paper (published on 29 Mar 2021)
Preprint (discussion started on 24 Jun 2020)

Interactive discussion

Status: closed

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

- Printer-friendly version

- Supplement

RC1: 'review', Anonymous Referee #1, 03 Jul 2020
- AC1: 'Response to Referee 1', Pascal Haegeli, 16 Sep 2020
RC2: 'Review of "Using avalanche problems to examine the effect of large-scale atmosphere-ocean oscillations on avalanche hazard in western Canada"', Anonymous Referee #2, 22 Jul 2020
- AC2: 'Response to Referee 2', Pascal Haegeli, 16 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) (23 Sep 2020) by Jürg Schweizer

AR by Pascal Haegeli on behalf of the Authors (27 Sep 2020) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Referee Nomination & Report Request started (03 Oct 2020) by Jürg Schweizer

RR by Anonymous Referee #1 (07 Nov 2020)

RR by Anonymous Referee #3 (12 Dec 2020)

ED: Publish subject to revisions (further review by editor and referees) (15 Dec 2020) by Jürg Schweizer

AR by Pascal Haegeli on behalf of the Authors (24 Jan 2021) Author's response Author's tracked changes Manuscript

ED: Referee Nomination & Report Request started (03 Feb 2021) by Jürg Schweizer

RR by Anonymous Referee #3 (14 Feb 2021)

Suggestions for revision or reasons for rejection

Thanks you very much for asking me to review the paper again.

Thank you very much for asking me to see the paper again. The authors have provided a very detailed and careful response to my review, which should be plagued. Specifically, the authors have well answered my concerns, related to methodological choices and assumptions and improved the paper content accordingly (description of the model, QQ-plot diagnoses). Also, the objective of the work done seems to me more apparent now as it was before, even if I still would not say that it is crystal clear (see below). Besides, the paper has not been modified that much in terms of presentation and discussion of the results.

Again, I have absolutely nothing against publication of the paper, but I am still quite sure that the findings could be introduced/discussed in a way that could make them more interesting/useful for a broad international readership, and not only for north America / Canada. Here a below a few suggestions /hints that should be considered before final publication to maximize the impact of the paper.

Main difficulty with the paper is that it is in between a methodological work (avalanche problem data, statistical modelling), a study that infers relations of geophysical interest (how some patterns control avalanche activity) and an approach that provides hints of operational interest for avalanche forecasting at seasonal scale. It is always difficult to write a paper with multiple objectives, since generally none of them can be completely fulfilled. A solution could be to structure the discussion accordingly. The paper could include subsections in the discussion section that address the pro’s con’s of the work done from these different points of views (e.g. why the method proposed to produce seasonal avalanche forecast is more interesting/efficient that including a supplementary step of seasonal forecast of snow and meteorological conditions at the local scale: because it is “cheap”, something that was not clear to me before) and how they relate to the international literature.

More specifically, I still really think the paper is too much oriented towards Canada and North America. The cryosphere is an international journal and, with regards to links between avalanche activity and synoptic patterns, readers may be interested by statements that goes beyond regional conclusions. I do not understand why the authors just mention that “similar studies have been conducted in other geographical regions…” and include only two of such references in their list. I agree that synoptic control on avalanche activity may vary regionally, but, at least, it could be stated clearly in introduction what we know, and in discussion how the work done updates or not the knowledge (e.g. is this control stronger or weaker that what we thought, is it stronger on the west coast of Canada with regards to Iceland, for example).

To a lesser extent, at several points of the paper (including abstract), the authors mention the interest of their approach with regards to better understanding the effects of climate change on avalanche hazard. By contrast they say that they exclude from their discussion references to work devoted to avalanche climate-linkages. This does not seem very consistent to me.

Hide

ED: Publish subject to technical corrections (17 Feb 2021) by Jürg Schweizer

AR by Pascal Haegeli on behalf of the Authors (25 Feb 2021) Author's response Manuscript

Short summary

Numerous large-scale atmosphere–ocean oscillations including the El Niño–Southern Oscillation, the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, the Pacific North American Teleconnection Pattern, and the Arctic Oscillation are known to substantially affect winter weather patterns in western Canada. Using avalanche problem information from public avalanche bulletins, this study presents a new approach for examining the effect of these atmospheric oscillations on the nature of avalanche hazard in western Canada.