Brief Communication: Contending estimates of 2003&ndash;2008 glacier mass balance over the Pamir–Karakoram–Himalaya

Kääb, A.; Treichler, D.; Nuth, C.; Berthier, E.

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-9-557-2015

Articles | Volume 9, issue 2

https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-9-557-2015

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

https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-9-557-2015

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

Articles | Volume 9, issue 2

Brief communication

|

19 Mar 2015

Brief communication |

| 19 Mar 2015

Brief Communication: Contending estimates of 2003–2008 glacier mass balance over the Pamir–Karakoram–Himalaya

A. Kääb, D. Treichler, C. Nuth, and E. Berthier

Download

Final revised paper (published on 19 Mar 2015)
Supplement to the final revised paper
Preprint (discussion started on 25 Nov 2014)
Supplement to the preprint

Interactive discussion

Status: closed

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

- Printer-friendly version

- Supplement

SC C2636: 'Early 21st century glacier mass balance over the Pamir-Karakoram-Himalaya', Mauri Pelto, 15 Dec 2014
RC C2648: 'Review comment', Anonymous Referee #1, 16 Dec 2014
SC C2686: 'Comment on Contending estimates of early 21st century glacier mass balance over the Pamir-Karakoram-Himalaya', Paolo Reggiani, 18 Dec 2014
- AC C2809: 'Response to Reggiani and Rientjes', Andreas Kääb, 09 Jan 2015
RC C2691: 'Review comments', D.J. Quincey, 19 Dec 2014

Peer-review completion

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

AR by Andreas Kääb on behalf of the Authors (12 Feb 2015) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Publish subject to technical corrections (03 Mar 2015) by Andreas Vieli

Kaeaeb paper TCD,
Revised version Feb 2015

Editor decision and comments by A. Vieli:

Both reviewers were very positive and recommended publications and the authors have addressed (or justified) all the raised points by the reviewers and the interactive comments very well and satisfactorily. The explanations in the methods have been improved and the conclusions are now in line with the presented results and analysis.
The format of brief communication is regarding content well justified as it provides a very valuable extension to earlier studies and new insight on a very timely issue. Length wise it is at the upper limit but acceptable. Regarding abstract length and number of references the guidelines suggest 100 words and 20 references (see TC guidelines), but I should have indicated this perhaps in an earlier stage. Thus, if possible without major changes/effort, some reduction in abstract length and references would be welcomed, but not enforced at this stage.

There are however a few very minor technical issues/typos that should be changed in the final submission:
- several citations in the text lack the year numbers in brackets (e.g. see list below ). Maybe the authors tried to avoid too much repetition in places where the same citation appears repeatedly in a row, but often there are other citations in between and therefore the citations not necessarily unique. So it is easiest to add the full citation (incl. year) everywhere.

List where year in citation is missing (may not be fully complete). :
line 173: add Gardelle et al (2013) and say in brackets ‘(they used their…)’
line 174: Gardner et al. (2013)
line 191: Kääb et al ????
line 215: Jacob et al.. (2012)
line 223: Gardner et al. (2013), rather than with commas (see comment by reviewer 1

- p, 3 line 88-89: should it not rather be ‘…in the very east of the East Nya….’

- p. 5 line 129: awkward sentence: ‘…difference trends on land, very close to zero…’, is on land needed here?

- p. 6 line 173

- p. 8 line 245: is there not ‘increasingly’ missing here: ‘…runoff is increasingly biased the further…’ (‘the further’ kind of asks for a trend).

- p. 9 line 268: the bullet point has accidently been deleted I assume. Put it back in.

The editor
Andreas Vieli

Hide

AR by Andreas Kääb on behalf of the Authors (07 Mar 2015) Manuscript

Short summary

Based on satellite laser altimetry over the Pamir--Karakoram Himalaya we detect strongest elevation losses over east Nyainqentanglha Shan and Spiti--Lahaul but slight elevation gains over west Kunlun Shan rather than over Karakoram. The current sea-level contribution of Pamir--Karakoram Himalaya glaciers is about 10% of the total global contribution of glaciers outside the ice sheets. We also improve estimates of glacier imbalance contribution to river discharge in the Himalayas.