Elevation change of the Greenland Ice Sheet due to surface mass balance and firn processes, 1960–2014

Kuipers Munneke, P.; Ligtenberg, S. R. M.; Noël, B. P. Y.; Howat, I. M.; Box, J. E.; Mosley-Thompson, E.; McConnell, J. R.; Steffen, K.; Harper, J. T.; Das, S. B.; van den Broeke, M. R.

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-9-2009-2015

Articles | Volume 9, issue 6

https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-9-2009-2015

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

https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-9-2009-2015

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

Articles | Volume 9, issue 6

Research article

|

02 Nov 2015

Research article |

| 02 Nov 2015

Elevation change of the Greenland Ice Sheet due to surface mass balance and firn processes, 1960–2014

P. Kuipers Munneke, S. R. M. Ligtenberg, B. P. Y. Noël, I. M. Howat, J. E. Box, E. Mosley-Thompson, J. R. McConnell, K. Steffen, J. T. Harper, S. B. Das, and M. R. van den Broeke

Download

Final revised paper (published on 02 Nov 2015)
Preprint (discussion started on 30 Jun 2015)

Interactive discussion

Status: closed

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

- Printer-friendly version

- Supplement

RC C1332: 'Review', Robert Arthern, 28 Jul 2015
RC C1345: 'Review of Elevation change of the Greenland ice sheet due to surface mass balance and firn processes, 1960-2013 By P. Kuipers Munneke et al.', Louise Sandberg Sørensen, 04 Aug 2015
- AC C1855: 'Response to reviewers #1 (Robert Arthern) and #2 (Louise Sandberg Sørensen)', Peter Kuipers Munneke, 09 Oct 2015
EC C1856: 'editor comments', Jonathan L. Bamber, 09 Oct 2015

Peer-review completion

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

AR by Peter Kuipers Munneke on behalf of the Authors (09 Oct 2015) Author's response

ED: Publish subject to minor revisions (Editor review) (13 Oct 2015) by Jonathan Bamber

Dear Peter, the paper is nearly ready for publication. There are just a few changes that need to be made that were raised in the original editor access review, which have not been addressed yet. They are (copying from the access review you received):

L31-32. Why do you cite 3 papers on mass balance but none of which use altimetry to determine dm/dt. Given that that is the apparent motivation for the paper it would be better to cite papers that do use volume change estimates such as Zwally et al 2011 and Hurkmans et al 2014, which is in the very same journal that you are submitting to. This latter paper, in particular, goes into some detail concerning SMB and firn compaction effects and the errors they can introduce.

l39-50. Again, I believe these comments are outdated for Greenland and none of the papers you cite are mass balance studies for the whole ice sheet using altimetry (unlike Zwally and Hurkmans). Both these papers discuss the assumptions made about density and have moved on from what is stated in this paragraph. The Zwally paper is now ~4 years old.

Fig 3, the text is MUCH too small. Even enlarged I could not read it. I suggest you reduce the total number of plots so that they are legible. You could add others to an SOM if you really wanted to include them all.

In addition, when viewing the pdf at 100%, the labelling for Figures 5 (numbers for Greenland cores on map); 7 (for the colour bar); 8 (for the colour bar); 9 (captions and the colour bar); 10 (for the colour bar); 11 (axes numbers) are all too small.

Please make sure the figures are legible when viewed at 100% and remember that they will likely be reduced in size (either single or double column) in the camera ready proof.

Hide

AR by Peter Kuipers Munneke on behalf of the Authors (15 Oct 2015) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Publish as is (16 Oct 2015) by Jonathan Bamber

AR by Peter Kuipers Munneke on behalf of the Authors (18 Oct 2015)

Short summary

The snow layer on top of the Greenland Ice Sheet is changing: it is thickening in the high and cold interior due to increased snowfall, while it is thinning around the margins. The marginal thinning is caused by compaction, and by more melt. This knowledge is important: there are satellites that measure volume change of the ice sheet. It can be caused by increased ice discharge, or by compaction of the snow layer. Here, we quantify the latter, so that we can translate volume to mass change.