Record summer rains in 2019 led to massive loss of surface and cave ice in SE Europe

Perşoiu, Aurel; Buzjak, Nenad; Onaca, Alexandru; Pennos, Christos; Sotiriadis, Yorgos; Ionita, Monica; Zachariadis, Stavros; Styllas, Michael; Kosutnik, Jure; Hegyi, Alexandru; Butorac, Valerija

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-15-2383-2021

Articles | Volume 15, issue 5

https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-15-2383-2021

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

https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-15-2383-2021

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

Articles | Volume 15, issue 5

Research article

|

21 May 2021

Research article |

| 21 May 2021

Record summer rains in 2019 led to massive loss of surface and cave ice in SE Europe

Aurel Perşoiu, Nenad Buzjak, Alexandru Onaca, Christos Pennos, Yorgos Sotiriadis, Monica Ionita, Stavros Zachariadis, Michael Styllas, Jure Kosutnik, Alexandru Hegyi, and Valerija Butorac

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Final revised paper (published on 21 May 2021)
Preprint (discussion started on 26 Oct 2020)

Interactive discussion

Status: closed

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

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- Supplement

RC1: 'Review: “Unprecedented loss of surface and cave ice in SE Europe related to record summer rains in 2019”', Anonymous Referee #1, 24 Nov 2020
- AC1: 'Reply on RC1', Aurel Perşoiu, 03 Jan 2021
RC2: 'Review_Unprecedented loss of surface and cave ice in SE Europe related to record summer rains in 2019_Aurel Persoiu et al.', Anonymous Referee #2, 06 Dec 2020
- AC2: 'Reply on RC2', Aurel Perşoiu, 03 Jan 2021
RC3: 'tc-2020-287-review', Zoltán Kern, 07 Dec 2020
- AC3: 'Reply on RC3', Aurel Perşoiu, 03 Jan 2021

Peer-review completion

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

ED: Reconsider after major revisions (further review by editor and referees) (22 Jan 2021) by Ketil Isaksen

AR by Aurel Perşoiu on behalf of the Authors (22 Jan 2021) Author's response Author's tracked changes Manuscript

ED: Referee Nomination & Report Request started (22 Jan 2021) by Ketil Isaksen

RR by Zoltán Kern (04 Feb 2021)

Suggestions for revision or reasons for rejection

Dear Authors, Dear Editor,

Thanks for the opportunity to read the revised version of the original manuscript. I appreciate the Authors' effort how they revised their original work. I think the introduction and the discussion improved a lot. The extension of the methodological section gives much better insight to the technical details of the applied methods which is a crucial requirement for the potential repeatability of the study. I like also the modified title of the study because it catches better the key message of the study.
Since glacierets and cave ice deposits are currently the main representatives of the cryosphere in the studied region (SE Europe) I think the topic can be interesting to the readership of the journal.
As written above the study improved a lot compared to the original version, however some minor revisions are still needed before the publication of the study:

line 73: I think Munroe 2020 could be a more pertinent reference here than Kern and Persoiu 2013

Munroe, J. S.: First Investigation of Perennial Ice in Winter Wonderland Cave, Uinta Mountains, Utah, USA, The Cryosphere Discuss. [preprint], https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-2020-152, in review, 2020.

line78: I suggest replacing “Most of” with “Many”

lines 145,177: Please change “table” to “Table” in the brackets.

lines 307-308: Can you provide any evidence supporting the statement “The thermal inversion layer inside this shallow entrance shaft was easily destroyed during the prolonged warm spell,…”?

lines 327-328: Needs revision. You probably wish to say that the climatic snowline (or TP-ELA) is above highest peaks in SE Europe, so these small glacierets are strongly controlled by topoclimatic conditions, and their mass balance is extremely affected by extreme events.

lines 331-332: Please consider replacing “glacierets we investigated” with “studied Bulgarian glacierets, ...." I think it is more understandable.

line 353: “unraveled unprecedented” Sorry, the meaning is unclear to me.

line 364: I suggest inserting “by the calibration-in-time approach” between the word “reconstructions” and “it”

line 366: I think “measured” should be written instead of “measure”

Figures
Fig2: This multipanel figure needs a careful checking. The cross section in panel 'e' seems to be Paradana however this cave is listed as 'd)' in the caption. Similarly, panel 'b' seems to be Chionotryopa Falakro, however it is listed as 'c)' in the caption. In addition, please check the name in the brackets after Paradana Cave. As far as I know the right spelling of the first surveyor is Pavel Kunaver.

Fig7: In the caption “glaciarets” should be replaced with “glacierets”

Fig8: Panel code should be 'e' instead of '3' in the caption.

Fig12: in panel 'b' the histogram seems to be the same as in panel 'a' suggesting that the "no. of observations" were not tuned to the past 30years. Please check and correct it if needed.

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RR by Anonymous Referee #1 (18 Feb 2021)

RR by Anonymous Referee #2 (26 Feb 2021)

ED: Publish subject to minor revisions (review by editor) (15 Mar 2021) by Ketil Isaksen

AR by Aurel Perşoiu on behalf of the Authors (24 Mar 2021) Author's response Author's tracked changes Manuscript

ED: Publish subject to technical corrections (07 Apr 2021) by Ketil Isaksen

AR by Aurel Perşoiu on behalf of the Authors (15 Apr 2021) Author's response Manuscript

Short summary

Extreme precipitation events in summer 2019 led to catastrophic loss of cave and surface ice in SE Europe at levels unprecedented during the last century. The projected continuous warming and increase in precipitation extremes could pose an additional threat to glaciers in southern Europe, resulting in a potentially ice-free SE Europe by the middle of the next decade (2035 CE).