Winter drainage of surface lakes on the Greenland Ice Sheet from Sentinel-1 SAR imagery

Benedek, Corinne L.; Willis, Ian C.

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-15-1587-2021

Articles | Volume 15, issue 3

https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-15-1587-2021

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

https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-15-1587-2021

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

Articles | Volume 15, issue 3

Research article

|

01 Apr 2021

Research article |

| 01 Apr 2021

Winter drainage of surface lakes on the Greenland Ice Sheet from Sentinel-1 SAR imagery

Corinne L. Benedek and Ian C. Willis

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Final revised paper (published on 01 Apr 2021)
Preprint (discussion started on 14 May 2020)

Interactive discussion

Status: closed

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

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- Supplement

RC1: 'Reviewer comment', Andrew Sole, 24 Jun 2020
- AC1: 'Response to Referee 1', Corinne Benedek, 14 Aug 2020
RC2: 'Review of "Winter drainage of surface lakes on the Greenland Ice Sheet from Sentinel-1 SAR Imagery"', Anonymous Referee #2, 26 Jun 2020
- AC2: 'Response to Referee 2', Corinne Benedek, 14 Aug 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) (23 Sep 2020) by Stef Lhermitte

AR by Corinne Benedek on behalf of the Authors (28 Nov 2020) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Referee Nomination & Report Request started (11 Dec 2020) by Stef Lhermitte

RR by Andrew Sole (28 Dec 2020)

Suggestions for revision or reasons for rejection

This is my second review of the paper. Overall the authors have incorporated my previous suggestions carefully and comprehensively. I do have several additional comments on the amended version, detailed below, that should be considered.

Specific comments

L10 (and elsewhere): I wonder if the lake volumes would be better quoted in metres cubed? The cubic kilometres numbers are very small indeed, and on line 27 discharge rate from lakes is discussed in cubic metres per second.

L14-15: I’m not convinced that the paper does show that ‘background winter ice motion can trigger rapid lake drainage’. Rather the paper indicates that lake drainage occurred in the absence of surface melting and discernible ice flow acceleration.

L19: ‘by reducing’ would be more specific than ‘via their effects on’.

L53: Missing space.

L54-55: I suggest that ‘. In another study, proglacial stream evidence from one study suggested that water was released from englacial or subglacial stores’ is deleted.

L56-57: The wording here suggests that this evidence was linked to the Rennermalm study, which I assume (based on the dates of the studies) it was not.

L102: ‘Orbit File Application’ (to fit with the way the other stages are worded).

L103: 'Geocoding' or ‘Orthorectification’ might be a better term as otherwise this could be confused with correcting backscatter for local terrain-derived incidence angle.

L114-115: This sentence is slightly repetitive and awkwardly worded.

L115: ‘over the winter’ might be better after ‘process’.

L152: ‘summed’ might be better than ‘added’.

L187: This error seems to have been calculated by adding the component errors in quadrature (which is the correct method). The same method should be used for calculating the error in differencing the ArcticDEM (see comment below).

L192: ICE should be subscript.

L199: Should the DEM errors not be added in quadrature to determine the error in the DEM difference calculation? sqrt(0.2.^2 + 0.2.^2) = 0.28 m

L227: ‘single image transition’ - state what time period this is - 12 days?

L264: 0.08 should be 0.28 I believe if the correct error calculation is used.

L267: To be consistent the ArcticDEM differencing error should be included again here.

L323: ‘most’ would be better as ‘best’.

L332: ‘physically based depth measurements’ should be 'empirically based depth estimates' (or something along those lines). These are not really measurements as such, but rather estimates (here and in the following section).

L349: Is there a missing ‘in’ in this sentence?

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RR by Anonymous Referee #2 (18 Jan 2021)

ED: Publish subject to minor revisions (review by editor) (25 Jan 2021) by Stef Lhermitte

AR by Corinne Benedek on behalf of the Authors (03 Feb 2021) Author's response Author's tracked changes Manuscript

ED: Publish as is (04 Feb 2021) by Stef Lhermitte

AR by Corinne Benedek on behalf of the Authors (14 Feb 2021) Manuscript

Short summary

The surface of the Greenland Ice Sheet contains thousands of surface lakes. These lakes can deliver water through cracks to the ice sheet base and influence the speed of ice flow. Here we look at instances of lakes draining in the middle of winter using the Sentinel-1 radar satellites. Winter-draining lakes can help us understand the mechanisms for lake drainages throughout the year and can point to winter movement of water that will impact our understanding of ice sheet hydrology.