Differences in the water-balance components of four lakes in the  southern-central Tibetan Plateau

Biskop, S.; Maussion, F.; Krause, P.; Fink, M.

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-20-209-2016

Articles | Volume 20, issue 1

https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-20-209-2016

© Author(s) 2016. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-20-209-2016

© Author(s) 2016. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.

Articles | Volume 20, issue 1

Research article

|

18 Jan 2016

Research article |

| 18 Jan 2016

Differences in the water-balance components of four lakes in the southern-central Tibetan Plateau

S. Biskop, F. Maussion, P. Krause, and M. Fink

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Final revised paper (published on 18 Jan 2016)
Supplement to the final revised paper
Preprint (discussion started on 29 Apr 2015)
Supplement to the preprint

Interactive discussion

Status: closed

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

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- Supplement

RC C1486: 'Interactive comment on “What are the key drivers of regional differences in the water balance on the Tibetan Plateau?“', Anonymous Referee #1, 14 May 2015
- AC C3273: 'Authors’ response to all four anonymous reviewers and the short comment posted by S. Zhou', Sophie Biskop, 25 Aug 2015
RC C1623: 'Review for hessd-12-4271-2015', Anonymous Referee #2, 20 May 2015
RC C1788: 'Review for manuscript 'What are the key drivers of regional differences in the water balance on the Tibetan Plateau?'', Anonymous Referee #3, 27 May 2015
RC C1863: 'Review of 'What are the key drivers of regional differences in the water balance on the Tibetan Plateau?' by S. Biskop et al.', Anonymous Referee #4, 30 May 2015
SC C2222: 'HESS-4LakePaper-Comments', Shiqiao Zhou, 24 Jun 2015

Peer-review completion

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

ED: Reconsider after major revisions (03 Sep 2015) by Bob Su

AR by Sophie Biskop on behalf of the Authors (13 Oct 2015) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Referee Nomination & Report Request started (20 Oct 2015) by Bob Su

RR by Anonymous Referee #2 (29 Oct 2015)

RR by Anonymous Referee #1 (02 Nov 2015)

RR by Anonymous Referee #4 (04 Nov 2015)

Suggestions for revision or reasons for rejection

The authors have substantially improved the quality of the manuscript. They have added considerable content about the interpretation of model outputs (role of glaciers, section 4.2.2) and about the discussion of factors potentially controlling the the lake-level variability (permafrost thawing, past lake level changes, section 5.1.2). I think the manuscript meets the requirement of HESS after minor corrections suggested below.

P. 17, l. 30 : "slightly higher...considering the percentage of basin area covered by glaciers"
I suggest "... considering also the lower percentage of basin area covered by glaciers in our study basins". Remove "slightly".

P. 18, l. 6: Please add in brackets a reference to the paper section where the values are provided.

P. 18, l. 24: "A decreasing trend in potential evaporation before 2000 might have resulted in rising lake levels in the central TP."
This is not clear from the wording. Is this decreasing trend a hypothetical assumption or has it been observed? Please rephrase.

P. 19, l.11: "The water contribution from permafrost will become limited when ground temperature increases above the melting point of the frozen soil."
The formulation is not concise. The water contribution does only become limited after a long period of permafrost thawing, I assume. An not "when ground temperature increases above the melting point". Please rephrase.

P. 23, l. 14: Maybe state here which type of satellite data were used.

P. 23, l. 16: "should be considered carefully".
I guess you mean "should be interpreted with care"

P. 23. l 18: "uncertainties which appear to be related to the precipitation-scaling factor, should not affect the overall conclusions drawn from the model-application results"
This is a bold statement, considering that using different precipitation scaling factors would indeed affect the overall conclusions (Figure 2). I recommend adding a short sentence explaining how uncertainty was constrained.

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ED: Publish subject to minor revisions (Editor review) (13 Nov 2015) by Bob Su

AR by Sophie Biskop on behalf of the Authors (23 Nov 2015) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Publish as is (07 Dec 2015) by Bob Su

AR by Sophie Biskop on behalf of the Authors (07 Dec 2015)

Short summary

In this study, the hydrological model J2000g was extended and applied to four selected endorheic lake basins in the southern-central part of the TP aiming to provide a more quantitative understanding of the key factors controlling their water balance. The model results indicated that the relative contribution of glacier runoff to total water inflow (between 14 and 30 %) plays a less important role compared to runoff generation from rainfall and snowmelt in non-glacierized land areas.