Analyses of Peace River Shallow Water Ice Profiling Sonar data and their implications for the roles played by frazil ice and in situ anchor ice growth in a freezing river

Marko, John R.; Topham, David R.

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-15-2473-2021

Articles | Volume 15, issue 5

https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-15-2473-2021

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

https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-15-2473-2021

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

Articles | Volume 15, issue 5

Research article

|

31 May 2021

Research article |

| 31 May 2021

Analyses of Peace River Shallow Water Ice Profiling Sonar data and their implications for the roles played by frazil ice and in situ anchor ice growth in a freezing river

John R. Marko and David R. Topham

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Final revised paper (published on 31 May 2021)
Preprint (discussion started on 16 Sep 2020)

Interactive discussion

Status: closed

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

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- Supplement

RC1: 'Major review comments', Anonymous Referee #1, 25 Nov 2020
- AC1: 'Reply on RC1', john marko, 30 Dec 2020
RC2: 'Review of RC-2020-212', Anonymous Referee #2, 01 Dec 2020
- AC2: 'Reply on RC2', john marko, 30 Dec 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) (03 Jan 2021) by Christian Haas

AR by john marko on behalf of the Authors (19 Jan 2021) Author's response Author's tracked changes Manuscript

ED: Referee Nomination & Report Request started (21 Jan 2021) by Christian Haas

RR by Anonymous Referee #1 (27 Jan 2021)

RR by Anonymous Referee #2 (07 Feb 2021)

Suggestions for revision or reasons for rejection

Review TC-2020-212-R1

I wish to thank the authors for the response to the first review which both sorted out some of my comment and provided an interesting background for the work and the results. I do find the description of the application of SWIPS for anchor/frazil ice studies important and relevant for the journal and I think it could be very useful for further work within this field.

It is still a long paper and quite densely packed with information, but some important clarifications are included to guide the reader.

The reason for the comparison CRISSP1D is now clearer. To some extent I still think this could be compacted since the primary objective should be more on the SWIPS results and the SWIPS findings indicating that in-situ growth is an explanation the ice formation process observed on the SWIPS

I do agree with the authors that in-situ growth is a process that could be important in anchor ice formation and therefore this could be a welcome contribution to the discussion which I assume will come as a result of this. Whether this is dominant related to frazil capture could that not be dependent on river characteristics like slope, depth, velocity, substrate material and degree of turbulence? How general is the Peace river data measured at a depth of 5 meters, will the same effects dominate in a turbulent shallow riffle which also could generate huge amounts of frazil?

Due to this I am still a bit unsure of the role of the quite long discussion/criticism of the Ghobrial/Loewen paper that is embedded in the current manuscript. How comparable is the mechanisms generating anchor ice in the two cases? Not that I think this discussion isn´t relevant and highly relevant in the scientific literature, but now there is a quite long discussion on this in a paper which focus from the start is different. Could this be better done in a separate discussion of the GL paper in light of the findings from this work? I am not sure, but at least I hope this paper triggers further discussion on anchor ice formation processes in rivers of different characteristics.

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ED: Publish subject to minor revisions (review by editor) (08 Feb 2021) by Christian Haas

AR by john marko on behalf of the Authors (19 Feb 2021) Author's response Author's tracked changes Manuscript

ED: Publish as is (20 Feb 2021) by Christian Haas

Short summary

Acoustic backscattering data from Peace River frazil events are interpreted to develop a quantitative model of interactions between ice particles in the water column and riverbed ice layers. Two generic behaviours, evident in observed time variability, are linked to differences in the relative stability of in situ anchor ice layers which develop at the beginning of each frazil interval and are determined by cooling rates. Changes in these layers are shown to control water column frazil content.