Ice-dynamic projections of the Greenland ice sheet in response to atmospheric and oceanic warming

Fürst, J. J.; Goelzer, H.; Huybrechts, P.

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-9-1039-2015

Articles | Volume 9, issue 3

https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-9-1039-2015

© Author(s) 2015. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-9-1039-2015

© Author(s) 2015. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.

Articles | Volume 9, issue 3

Research article

|

20 May 2015

Research article |

| 20 May 2015

Ice-dynamic projections of the Greenland ice sheet in response to atmospheric and oceanic warming

J. J. Fürst, H. Goelzer, and P. Huybrechts

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Final revised paper (published on 20 May 2015)
Preprint (discussion started on 16 Jul 2014)

Interactive discussion

Status: closed

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

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RC C1806: 'Review of 'Ice dynamic projections of the Greenland ice sheet in response to atmospheric and oceanic warming'', Anonymous Referee #1, 15 Sep 2014
- AC C3183: 'Reply to Anonymous Referee #1', Johannes J. Fürst, 05 Mar 2015
RC C2172: 'Review of Furst et al., 2014 (TCD)', Anonymous Referee #2, 28 Oct 2014
- AC C3184: 'Reply to Anonymous Referee #2', Johannes J. Fürst, 05 Mar 2015

Peer-review completion

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

AR by Johannes J. Fürst on behalf of the Authors (05 Mar 2015) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Referee Nomination & Report Request started (20 Mar 2015) by G. Hilmar Gudmundsson

RR by Anonymous Referee #2 (20 Mar 2015)

Suggestions for revision or reasons for rejection

Comments on revised manuscript: “Ice-dynamic projections of the Greenland ice sheet in response to atmospheric and oceanic warming”

I find the manuscript to be improved, and eligible for publication pending a few minor technical corrections (listed below; I do not require a re-review of these).

General: I would suggest one final, very tight author edit, to fix awkward sentences (e.g. in the Abstract: "Ice loss rates are found to abate for the most favorable scenario where the warming already peaks in this century...")

1) “As AOGCM input was not available for RCP6.0 beyond 2100 and as the divergent response of the few AOGCMs under RCP8.5 is not considered compatible with our ensemble approach, projections were continued until 2300 AD only for the two lowest scenarios.”

I agree with the rationale, but I think it could be worded here more accurately, for the general reader. For example, WHY is it not considered ‘compatible with our ensemble approach’?

2) “This reflects that AOGCMs are not expected to correctly reproduce the real trend over such a short time period.”

I appreciate greater discussion and clarification of this topic. I suggest a further few sentences to explain to the naive reader why this is the case (climate models have internal variability that isn’t expected to match the absolute timing of real-word variability, except by coincidence or forced assimilation).

3) “Discontinuities in these anomalies, when switching the forcing in 1958 and 2005, generally fall below the interannual variability.”

This statement (and the author’s justification for not worrying about the step-change in anomaly forcing) is not quite convincing to me (or perhaps careful readers). I suggest a more robust re-write.

4) “The overestimation of margin thicknesses after spinning up an ice flow model for large-scale geometries is a well-known and well-quantified effect (refer to the 4 references given in the text). The next comment of the reviewer even refers to this as common ice-sheet model deficiencies. In conclusion, the authors consider it a redundant exercise to present and quantify these differences here.”

I re-request a plot of simulated ice sheet geometry (and comparison to observed) because in my opinion readers should simply be visually aware of the absolute state of the model, from which simulated geometrical changes (e.g Figures 8,10) depart. I feel such an ‘absolute’ plot should be (and usually is) a standard component of any perturbation study. I certainly do not fault the authors of this study for having biases present; I only ask that these biases be clearly visible to readers, to aid in their interpretation of the study’s results. At this point I will leave it to the Editor’s final discretion as to whether a plot is absolutely necessary or not.

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RR by Anonymous Referee #3 (10 Apr 2015)

ED: Publish as is (16 Apr 2015) by G. Hilmar Gudmundsson

AR by Johannes J. Fürst on behalf of the Authors (17 Apr 2015)