Articles | Volume 15, issue 5
https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-15-2251-2021
https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-15-2251-2021
Comment/reply
 | Highlight paper
 | 
17 May 2021
Comment/reply | Highlight paper |  | 17 May 2021

Comment on “Exceptionally high heat flux needed to sustain the Northeast Greenland Ice Stream” by Smith-Johnsen et al. (2020)

Paul D. Bons, Tamara de Riese, Steven Franke, Maria-Gema Llorens, Till Sachau, Nicolas Stoll, Ilka Weikusat, Julien Westhoff, and Yu Zhang

Download

Interactive discussion

Status: closed
Status: closed
AC: Author comment | RC: Referee comment | SC: Short comment | EC: Editor comment
Printer-friendly Version - Printer-friendly version Supplement - Supplement

Peer-review completion

AR: Author's response | RR: Referee report | ED: Editor decision
ED: Publish subject to minor revisions (review by editor) (18 Mar 2021) by Nanna Bjørnholt Karlsson
AR by Paul D. Bons on behalf of the Authors (18 Mar 2021)  Author's response   Author's tracked changes   Manuscript 
ED: Publish as is (06 Apr 2021) by Nanna Bjørnholt Karlsson
AR by Paul D. Bons on behalf of the Authors (10 Apr 2021)  Author's response   Manuscript 
Short summary
The modelling of Smith-Johnson et al. (The Cryosphere, 14, 841–854, 2020) suggests that a very large heat flux of more than 10 times the usual geothermal heat flux is required to have initiated or to control the huge Northeast Greenland Ice Stream. Our comparison with known hotspots, such as Iceland and Yellowstone, shows that such an exceptional heat flux would be unique in the world and is incompatible with known geological processes that can raise the heat flux.