Modeling the snow surface temperature with a one-layer energy balance snowmelt model

You, J.; Tarboton, D. G.; Luce, C. H.

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-18-5061-2014

Articles | Volume 18, issue 12

https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-18-5061-2014

© Author(s) 2014. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-18-5061-2014

© Author(s) 2014. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.

Articles | Volume 18, issue 12

Research article

|

11 Dec 2014

Research article |

| 11 Dec 2014

Modeling the snow surface temperature with a one-layer energy balance snowmelt model

J. You, D. G. Tarboton, and C. H. Luce

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Final revised paper (published on 11 Dec 2014)
Preprint (discussion started on 10 Dec 2013)

Interactive discussion

Status: closed

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

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- Supplement

RC C7343: 'Revision', Anonymous Referee #1, 20 Jan 2014
- AC C8339: 'Response to Anonymous Referee #1', Jinsheng You, 31 Mar 2014
RC C7896: 'Review', Anonymous Referee #2, 14 Feb 2014
- AC C8340: 'ResponsetoAnonymousReferee#2', Jinsheng You, 31 Mar 2014
RC C7980: 'Review "Modeling the snow surface temperature with a one-layer energy balance snowmelt model" by You. J., Tarboton, D. G. and Luce. C. H.', Michael Lehning, 21 Feb 2014
- AC C8341: 'Response to M. Lehning (Referee)', Jinsheng You, 31 Mar 2014
AC C8342: 'Revised text and figures', Jinsheng You, 31 Mar 2014

Peer-review completion

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

ED: Reconsider after major revisions (09 Apr 2014) by Carlo De Michele

AR by Jinsheng You on behalf of the Authors (12 May 2014) Author's response

ED: Referee Nomination & Report Request started (30 May 2014) by Carlo De Michele

RR by Anonymous Referee #1 (01 Jun 2014)

RR by Anonymous Referee #2 (11 Jun 2014)

Suggestions for revision or reasons for rejection

General comments

I would like to thank authors for their revision, however some important revision is still needed. Some important comments from the first review were not considered but are needed mainly to increase the significance of the contribution. I still feel that using additional data for showing the value of the new approach is essential. The split sample validation of the approach is an important part of hypothesis testing (in this case new parametrization of the model) and for such validation some new (independent) data are needed. The model (new approach) is calibrated for one season (which might be considered even as a short period), but the validation in an independent period is not presented. I would strongly suggest to revise/add such validation to the manuscript.

I'm also did not find some response and improvements to the comments concerning the Results and Discussion sections. In the Results, there are presented Figures without a closer explanations what the readers should see and what does it mean with respect to the paper's objectives. For example, on p.32, l.696-698, there is a sentence that the comparisons are shown in Figure 9,10,11 and 12, without any further descriptions. In the Discussion section should also be more closely linked with the results of other studies (not only discussing the own results), in order to clearly indicate the added value and implications of the findings. In some paragraphs, it is not clear, how are these related to the manuscript. For example, there is a paragraph showing different values of thermal conductivity, found in other studies, but it there is no discussion on how it is related to the study?

Specific comments

There is still some space for making Figures more consistent. Fig. 3 to 8 shows the same time period, but the x-axis is not the same (i.e. tick labels, axis size, line type/color for the same variable, etc.). Also some Figure captions are not self-explanatory, please consider to revise them.

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ED: Reconsider after major revisions (26 Jun 2014) by Carlo De Michele

AR by Jinsheng You on behalf of the Authors (06 Oct 2014) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Referee Nomination & Report Request started (07 Oct 2014) by Carlo De Michele

RR by Anonymous Referee #2 (09 Oct 2014)

ED: Publish subject to technical corrections (30 Oct 2014) by Carlo De Michele

AR by Jinsheng You on behalf of the Authors (06 Nov 2014) Author's response Manuscript

Short summary

This paper evaluates three improvements to an energy balance snowmelt model aimed to represent snow surface temperature while retaining the parsimony of a single layer. Surface heat flow is modeled using a forcing term related to the vertical temperature difference and a restore term related to the temporal gradient of surface temperature. Adjustments for melt water refreezing and thermal conductivity when the snow is shallow are introduced. The model performs well at the three test sites.