A ground temperature map of the North Atlantic permafrost region based on remote sensing and reanalysis data

Westermann, S.; Østby, T. I.; Gisnås, K.; Schuler, T. V.; Etzelmüller, B.

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-9-1303-2015

Articles | Volume 9, issue 3

https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-9-1303-2015

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

https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-9-1303-2015

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

Articles | Volume 9, issue 3

Research article

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23 Jun 2015

Research article | Highlight paper |

| 23 Jun 2015

A ground temperature map of the North Atlantic permafrost region based on remote sensing and reanalysis data

S. Westermann, T. I. Østby, K. Gisnås, T. V. Schuler, and B. Etzelmüller

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Status: closed

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

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RC C186: 'tc-2014-206_rev1', Anonymous Referee #1, 09 Mar 2015
- AC C727: 'Reply the Referee # 1', Sebastian Westermann, 07 May 2015
RC C188: 'Reviewer report', Anonymous Referee #2, 11 Mar 2015
- AC C728: 'Reply to Referee 2', Sebastian Westermann, 07 May 2015

Peer-review completion

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

AR by Sebastian Westermann on behalf of the Authors (07 May 2015) Author's response

ED: Referee Nomination & Report Request started (20 May 2015) by Tobias Bolch

RR by Anonymous Referee #2 (26 May 2015)

ED: Publish subject to minor revisions (Editor review) (27 May 2015) by Tobias Bolch

Dear authors,

Thank you very much for your thorough revisions. The manuscript is now almost acceptable. I have only few technical comments which I ask you to consider prior to publication:

P3L5: “warming of global climate”. The term “climate warming” is sometimes used but is not correct. The climate is usually defined as “The slowly varying aspects of the atmosphere–hydrosphere–land surface system” or “the weather average over a longer period.” Warming refers to temperature which is only one aspect of the climate. Please write “warming of global atmosphere”, “global warming”, “temperature increase”, or similar instead.

P3L14: IPCC. You should refer earlier to the current IPCC AR5 and mention that the permafrost processes were not well represented. In addition, it is, to my knowledge, not clear if there will be a next IPCC. Hence, please add “or similar global assessments”.

P3L20: Omit “recently”. It is not really recently anymore and especially not in few years when the paper will also be read.

P3: I agree that permafrost itself cannot be seen. But there are indirect indicators and landforms which provide a hint about permafrost existence. Please add a short statement and one or two references (maybe Westermann et al. 2015 in the Remote Sensing of the Cryosphere Book?)

Section 2.6: Include the information about the source of the glacier cover. Is it also from the MODIS land cover product or did you use additional sources (e.g. the Randolph Glacier Inventory)?.

P25L10: an -> and

Figures: It is unfortunately more and more common to mention the meaning of symbols, colours etc. in the captions (e.g. Glacierized areas are shown in white, Black dots: borehole sites…). This information can easily added in the legend and increases the readability of the figures. I would appreciate if you could add this info in the legend, but leave the final decision up to you. However, you must add the unit to each colour bar (e.g. missing in Fig. 1) and the information what the colours represents (e.g. Tmodelled)

I am looking forward to the final version of your manuscript.

Best regards,

Tobias Bolch -Editor-

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AR by Sebastian Westermann on behalf of the Authors (02 Jun 2015) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Publish as is (03 Jun 2015) by Tobias Bolch

AR by Sebastian Westermann on behalf of the Authors (12 Jun 2015) Author's response

Short summary

We use remotely sensed land surface temperature and land cover in conjunction with air temperature and snowfall from a reanalysis product as input for a simple permafrost model. The scheme is applied to the permafrost regions bordering the North Atlantic. A comparison with ground temperatures in boreholes suggests a modeling accuracy of 2 to 2.5 °C.