Inter-comparison of snow depth over Arctic sea ice from reanalysis reconstructions and satellite retrieval

Zhou, Lu; Stroeve, Julienne; Xu, Shiming; Petty, Alek; Tilling, Rachel; Winstrup, Mai; Rostosky, Philip; Lawrence, Isobel R.; Liston, Glen E.; Ridout, Andy; Tsamados, Michel; Nandan, Vishnu

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-15-345-2021

Articles | Volume 15, issue 1

https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-15-345-2021

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

https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-15-345-2021

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

Articles | Volume 15, issue 1

Research article

|

27 Jan 2021

Research article |

| 27 Jan 2021

Inter-comparison of snow depth over Arctic sea ice from reanalysis reconstructions and satellite retrieval

Lu Zhou, Julienne Stroeve, Shiming Xu, Alek Petty, Rachel Tilling, Mai Winstrup, Philip Rostosky, Isobel R. Lawrence, Glen E. Liston, Andy Ridout, Michel Tsamados, and Vishnu Nandan

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Final revised paper (published on 27 Jan 2021)
Supplement to the final revised paper
Preprint (discussion started on 09 Mar 2020)
Supplement to the preprint

Interactive discussion

Status: closed

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

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RC1: 'Review of Inter-comparison of snow depth over sea ice from multiple methods by Zhou, Stroeve and others.', Anonymous Referee #1, 27 Apr 2020
- AC1: 'Response to reviewer 1', Lu Zhou, 20 Aug 2020
RC2: 'Review comments', Anonymous Referee #2, 02 Jul 2020
- AC2: 'Response to reviewer 2', Lu Zhou, 20 Aug 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) (31 Aug 2020) by John Yackel

AR by Lu Zhou on behalf of the Authors (20 Oct 2020) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Referee Nomination & Report Request started (20 Oct 2020) by John Yackel

RR by Anonymous Referee #3 (09 Nov 2020)

Suggestions for revision or reasons for rejection

This is a second round review of the manuscript “Inter-comparison of snow
depth over sea ice from multiple methods” submitted by Lu Zhou et al. The topic fits well to The Cryosphere and is of great and timely relevance. The authors have addressed most comments raised by the previous reviewers. I have some more specific and general suggestions.

The representation of the results is not always reproducible and accurate. In particular I am not satisfied with the graphical representation of the distributions. The underlying data are obscured by using kernel density smoothing for the histograms. It would be better to also show the underlying histograms. It is unclear how the averaging process of the gridding smears the distributions.

The graphical representation of scatter plots (Fig 10 an 13) is not very nice. The frequency of points is not visible. Better show density scatter plots like in https://doi.org/10.1029/2020GL088970

Numbers are reported not only with the significant digits which pretends too high accuracy, e.g. two modes of 18.0 cm and 32.0 cm. How can the mode be derived with subcentimeter accuracy? Units should not be set in italics.

The data availability (upon request from the authors) is against the FAIR principle which is adopted by the journal.

The title is very general. It should include more details about the region (Arctic) and the methods.

The abstract lacks details about the results. For example, I think the finding that the PMW Bremen and PMW DMI products show essentially no variability/spread compared to the buoy data is important to mention. I can not see the consistency in general structure among different snow depth data sets. Better remove this half-sentence from the abstract.

Move supplementary plots into the main part if necessary for the understanding.

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RR by Anonymous Referee #4 (09 Nov 2020)

Suggestions for revision or reasons for rejection

Review of Zhou, L., Stroeve, J., Xu, S., Petty, A., Tilling, R., Winstrup, M., Rostosky, P., Lawrence, I. R., Liston, G. E., Ridout, A., Tsamados, M., and Nandan, V.: Inter-comparison of snow depth over sea ice from multiple methods, The Cryosphere Discuss., https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-2020-65, in review, 2020.

This is a very timely paper on inter-comparison of snow-depth products derived using a variety of methods. Snow depth on sea ice is a hot research topic and this paper for the first time pulls together and inter-compares many different methods. The paper is very thorough in its comparisons and certainly deserves to be published asap.

The paper has been reviewed already and I am only seeing this 2nd version, so I have only a few comments:

L20: observations. -> observations including the development of new products.
L39: IIn -> In
L118: within Arctic basin -> within the Artic basin
L173: consistence -> consistent
Section 2 and specifically 2.3.2: The term resolution is not used properly. On numerous occasions in the text, grid spacing is mis-interpreted as resolution. Please fix. Especially L250 and L266 but also L233-234. In products where low frequency PMR data are used, the spatial resolution is typically 30-50+ kilometers. Grid spacing can be much finer, but that does not mean resolution.
L310-315: Discuss if the difference observed between reanalysis-based products over MY-ice can be explained by their different snow depth initialization procedures.
L325: snowpack is still significant -> the snowpack is still significantly
L343: discrepancies -> differences
L362-63: W99 snow accumulates -> W99 accumulates
L376: 2.0 cm to 3.0 cm -> 2.0 to 3.0 cm
L406: in 8 -> in Figure 8
L416: Note that SnowModel-LG has denser AND thinner snow than e.g. NESOSIM. This may correspond to very similar SWE. This observation could be included in this section
L423: larger spatial scales -> coarser spatial scales
L442: “best against (R**2“, some text seems to be missing here
L498: n -> In

Just a suggestion:
I would consider leaving out the comparison with buoy data since it does not bring any further insight. Alternatively move it to supplementary material and consider including some of the Suppl. Material in the main paper instead. Especially figures S1, S2 and S3 I believe should be in the main paper.

Section 4.3
You should also discuss and relate/refer to:
Geiger, C., Müller, H., Samluk, J., Bernstein, E., & Richter-Menge, J. (2015). Impact of spatial aliasing on sea-ice thickness measurements. Annals of Glaciology, 56(69), 353-362. doi:10.3189/2015AoG69A644

L539: percipitation -> precipitation

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ED: Publish subject to minor revisions (review by editor) (11 Nov 2020) by John Yackel

AR by Lu Zhou on behalf of the Authors (21 Nov 2020) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Publish as is (25 Nov 2020) by John Yackel

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

Short summary

Snow on sea ice plays an important role in the Arctic climate system. Large spatial and temporal discrepancies among the eight snow depth products are analyzed together with their seasonal variability and long-term trends. These snow products are further compared against various ground-truth observations. More analyses on representation error of sea ice parameters are needed for systematic comparison and fusion of airborne, in situ and remote sensing observations.