A snow cover climatology for the Pyrenees from  MODIS snow products

Gascoin, S.; Hagolle, O.; Huc, M.; Jarlan, L.; Dejoux, J.-F.; Szczypta, C.; Marti, R.; Sánchez, R.

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-19-2337-2015

Articles | Volume 19, issue 5

https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-19-2337-2015

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

https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-19-2337-2015

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

Articles | Volume 19, issue 5

Research article

|

19 May 2015

Research article |

| 19 May 2015

A snow cover climatology for the Pyrenees from MODIS snow products

S. Gascoin, O. Hagolle, M. Huc, L. Jarlan, J.-F. Dejoux, C. Szczypta, R. Marti, and R. Sánchez

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Final revised paper (published on 19 May 2015)
Preprint (discussion started on 12 Nov 2014)

Interactive discussion

Status: closed

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

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- Supplement

RC C5314: 'Review', Juraj Parajka, 25 Nov 2014
- AC C6229: 'Response to J. Parajka', Simon Gascoin, 30 Jan 2015
- AC C6261: 'complement', Simon Gascoin, 01 Feb 2015
RC C5600: 'Review of paper', Anonymous Referee #2, 09 Dec 2014
- AC C6235: 'Response to Referee 2', Simon Gascoin, 30 Jan 2015

Peer-review completion

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

ED: Reconsider after major revisions (23 Feb 2015) by Carlo De Michele

AR by Simon Gascoin on behalf of the Authors (03 Apr 2015)

ED: Referee Nomination & Report Request started (10 Apr 2015) by Carlo De Michele

RR by Juraj Parajka (17 Apr 2015)

Suggestions for revision or reasons for rejection

General comments
I would like to thank the authors for their revision. The objectives are now clearly defined and results clearly presented. I have only a two minor comments which might be considered before publication of the manuscript. These include a more in depth link of published results with existing literature (in Discussion section) and some improvement of the figures. The details of my suggestion are given in specific comments below.
Overall, I enjoyed to read the revised version of the paper and look forward to see it published after some minor revision.

Specific comments
1) I would suggest to consider following extension of the Discussion section:
(a) In section 4.2 - to present some more comparisons with other studies comparing Landsat and MODIS (e.g. Dery et al., 2005, etc.)
(b) In section 4.3 to compare more the results with studies evaluating the efficiency of cloud filling methods (e.g. Hall et al., 2010, Gao et al., 2011, etc)
(c) In section 5.1 to compare more the results with studies looking on the variability of snowline elevation (e.g. Fig. 7 and Fig 8 of Krajci et al. 2014, among others)

2) The clarity and consistency of Figures might be enhanced. I would suggest to use the same layout (template) for similar figures, which include also the same font, size, secondary x,y axes style, etc. Additionally, I have following remarks:
(a) Symbols in Figure 1 are difficult to see. Please consider to make them more visible.
(b) Legend of Figure 4 is small and difficult to read. May be it will be enough to present it only once, but larger.
(c) Please consider to use the same colors (the same color legend) for seasons in both Figures 5 and 6.

References
Dery, SJ, Salomonson, VV, Stieglitz, M, Hall, DK, Appel, I (2005). An approach to using snow areal depletion curves inferred from MODIS and its application to land surface modelling in Alaska. HYDROLOGICAL PROCESSES, 19(14), 2755-2774.
Hall, DK, Riggs, GA, Foster, JL, Kumar, SV (2010). Development and evaluation of a cloud-gap-filled MODIS daily snow-cover product. REMOTE SENSING OF ENVIRONMENT, 114(3), 496-503.
Yang Gao, Ning Lu, Tandong Yao, Evaluation of a cloud-gap-filled MODIS daily snow cover product over the Pacific Northwest USA, Journal of Hydrology, Volume 404, Issues 3–4, 11 July 2011, Pages 157-165, ISSN 0022-1694, http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jhydrol.2011.04.026.
Krajčí, P., Holko, L., Perdigão, R.A.P., Parajka, J., Estimation of regional snowline elevation (RSLE) from MODIS images for seasonally snow covered mountain basins,2014,Journal of Hydrology,519,1769-1778.

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ED: Publish subject to technical corrections (26 Apr 2015) by Carlo De Michele

AR by Simon Gascoin on behalf of the Authors (30 Apr 2015) Author's response Manuscript

Short summary

There is a good agreement between the MODIS snow products and observations from automatic stations and Landsat snow maps in the Pyrenees. The optimal thresholds for which a MODIS pixel is marked as snow-covered are 40mm in water equivalent and 150mm in snow depth. We generate a gap-filled snow cover climatology for the Pyrenees. We compute the mean snow cover duration by elevation and aspect classes. We show anomalous snow patterns in 2012 and consequences on hydropower production.