Modelling surface temperature and radiation budget of snow-covered complex terrain

Robledano, Alvaro; Picard, Ghislain; Arnaud, Laurent; Larue, Fanny; Ollivier, Inès

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-16-559-2022

Articles | Volume 16, issue 2

https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-16-559-2022

© Author(s) 2022. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-16-559-2022

© Author(s) 2022. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 16, issue 2

Research article

|

15 Feb 2022

Research article |

| 15 Feb 2022

Modelling surface temperature and radiation budget of snow-covered complex terrain

Alvaro Robledano, Ghislain Picard, Laurent Arnaud, Fanny Larue, and Inès Ollivier

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Final revised paper (published on 15 Feb 2022)
Preprint (discussion started on 30 Jun 2021)

Interactive discussion

Status: closed

RC1:
'Comment on tc-2021-180', Anonymous Referee #1, 02 Aug 2021

Comments are attached.

Citation: https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-2021-180-RC1
- AC1: 'Reply on RC1', Alvaro Robledano, 17 Nov 2021
  
  Our answers to Anonymous Referee #1 are available in PDF format as a supplement.
  
  Citation: https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-2021-180-AC1
RC2:
'Comment on tc-2021-180', Anonymous Referee #2, 08 Oct 2021

The comment was uploaded in the form of a supplement: https://tc.copernicus.org/preprints/tc-2021-180/tc-2021-180-RC2-supplement.pdf

Citation: https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-2021-180-RC2
- AC2: 'Reply on RC2', Alvaro Robledano, 17 Nov 2021
  
  Our answers to Anonymous Referee #2 are available in PDF format as a supplement
  
  Citation: https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-2021-180-AC2

Peer review completion

AR: Author's response | RR: Referee report | ED: Editor decision | EF: Editorial file upload

ED: Reconsider after major revisions (further review by editor and referees) (29 Nov 2021) by Mark Flanner

AR by Alvaro Robledano on behalf of the Authors (30 Nov 2021) Author's response Author's tracked changes Manuscript

ED: Referee Nomination & Report Request started (01 Dec 2021) by Mark Flanner

RR by Anonymous Referee #2 (04 Jan 2022)

Suggestions for revision or reasons for rejection

In the answer to my comments, the authors have addressed all my concerns, and they have corrected the pointed errors in the revised manuscript. The language has been significantly improved and the text re-organized, resulting in an easier and pleasant-to-read paper. This work is a nice and useful step forward in the modelling of surface radiation and temperature over snow-covered complex terrains. I only have few final very minor suggestions (below). I recommend the editor to publish the paper after my suggestions have been addressed.

Minor suggestions:
Figure 1: This figure still includes too many components that are not explained in the figure caption. I would remove the scheme of the lapse-rate effect (it is more confusing than helping, in my view), but if you want to keep it, at least explain in the figure caption or in a label that the colour code in the scheme illustrates the lapse-rate effect, with decreasing temperatures with increasing elevation. I would definitely remove the “u constant” label, together with the associated blue arrows: it is not associated to any of the examined topographic effects (it is just an assumption made in your calculation of turbulent fluxes) and therefore not relevant in the figure. Finally, the label “cast shadow” points to a grey area that, in my understanding, includes both self-shadow (on the left slope) and cast shadow (on the right slope). To help the reader in distinguishing between the two of them, I would mark with different colour the two slopes, and label them “self-shadow” and “cast shadow”.
p.11, line 268: “qsat(Ts,Ps) is the specific humidity at snow surface temperature Ts and pressure Ps”: please correct with “qsat is the saturation specific humidity at the snow surface, with surface temperature Ts and pressure Ps, and qair is the specific humidity at the level where ait temperature and humidity are measured (2m?)”
p.11, line 287: “surface specific humidity” should be “saturation specific humidity at the surface”.

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ED: Publish subject to technical corrections (05 Jan 2022) by Mark Flanner

AR by Alvaro Robledano on behalf of the Authors (14 Jan 2022) Author's response Manuscript

Short summary

Topography controls the surface temperature of snow-covered, mountainous areas. We developed a modelling chain that uses ray-tracing methods to quantify the impact of a few topographic effects on snow surface temperature at high spatial resolution. Its large spatial and temporal variations are correctly simulated over a 50 km² area in the French Alps, and our results show that excluding a single topographic effect results in cooling (or warming) effects on the order of 1 °C.