Rainwater propagation through snowpack during rain-on-snow sprinkling experiments under different snow conditions

Juras, Roman; Würzer, Sebastian; Pavlásek, Jirka; Vitvar, Tomáš; Jonas, Tobias

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-21-4973-2017

Articles | Volume 21, issue 9

https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-21-4973-2017

© Author(s) 2017. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-21-4973-2017

© Author(s) 2017. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.

Articles | Volume 21, issue 9

Research article

|

29 Sep 2017

Research article |

| 29 Sep 2017

Rainwater propagation through snowpack during rain-on-snow sprinkling experiments under different snow conditions

Roman Juras, Sebastian Würzer, Jirka Pavlásek, Tomáš Vitvar, and Tobias Jonas

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Final revised paper (published on 29 Sep 2017)
Preprint (discussion started on 12 Dec 2016)

Interactive discussion

Status: closed

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

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- Supplement

RC1: 'Review', Anonymous Referee #1, 30 Dec 2016
- AC1: 'Response to the anonymous referee', Roman Juras, 15 Mar 2017
RC2: 'Review hess-2016-612: Rainwater propagation through snowpack during rain-on-snow events under different snow condition by Juras et al.', Jakob Garvelmann, 04 Jan 2017
- AC2: 'Response to the referee J. Garvelmann', Roman Juras, 15 Mar 2017
RC3: 'Review', Juraj Parajka, 16 Jan 2017
- AC3: 'Response to the referee J. Parajka', Roman Juras, 15 Mar 2017

Peer-review completion

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

ED: Reconsider after major revisions (further review by Editor and Referees) (03 Apr 2017) by Markus Weiler

AR by Roman Juras on behalf of the Authors (29 May 2017) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Referee Nomination & Report Request started (18 Jun 2017) by Markus Weiler

RR by Jakob Garvelmann (03 Jul 2017)

Suggestions for revision or reasons for rejection

Re-Review
hess-2016-612: Rainwater propagation through snowpack during rain-on-snow events under different snow condition by Juras et al.

The manuscript about the results of 4 sprinkling experiments with deuterium enriched water on natural snow blocks has sufficiently improved during the review process. However, there are still some minor revisions that needs to be realized prior to a publication in HESS.

Page 1, Line 19: The snowpack runoff was continuously recorded. The water was, however sampled in a certain temporal resolution. Please specify.

Page 1, Abstract: Please mention that there was no proof for refreezing.

Page 1, Line33: The benchmark study on a large food in the Pacific North West (Marks et al., 1998) is missing here.

Page 2, line 15ff: There is missing some information on studies and the mechanisms of refreezing in cold snow packs (formation of ice layers etc.)

Page 4, Line34: You would like to refer to Figure 5, right? However, this reference is not needed here from my point of view.

Page 5, Line 2: Please add some information on ho wand where the snowpack was sampled prior tot he experiments.

Page 5, Line 10: I guess the samples after the experiments were collected at the study plot. The samples before were collected a few meters away as explained earlier in the text. Please specify here.

Page 5, Line 14: was instead of were

Page 5, Line 14ff: Please proved a bit more infos on the stable isotope analysis. About precision oft he analysis. Where replicate house standards used and replicate samplesmeasured ect. The last sentence of this section is confusing (I guess you are refering tot he measurement accuracy.... Please clarify.

Page 6, Line 31: What to you mean with significant? Please quantify.

Page 6, Line 35+36: This is may it is important to know the location of the sampled profiles as suggested earlier.

The results section is fairly short now. But I think the most important points are picked out. Please think about adding some additional information at some points.

There is definitely missing an explanation of Figure 4 in the results section. The isotope dynamic of experiment 2 is obviously different from the other 3 experiments. Please provide a detailed description about this.

You are describing the snow covers in experiment 2-4 as ripe melting snow packs. The snow in experiment 1 as non-ripe in contrast. Figure 5 clearly shows that there was a little bit of runoff prior to the onset of the sprinkling. Which means that there was already some snow melt going on. What are the reasons? There is missing an explanation in the text. Furthermore it would be helpful to provide the results of the grain size analysis you carried out of the snowpack of the different experiments.

Page 7, Line 7: “Snow temperature were mostly below freezing point…” This sentence is very vague. Have you measured a profile? Where was the coldest temp measured etc. Pleas provide more infos here.

Page 9, Line 17: “To the contrary” Sounds a bit strange. Please revise

Page 9, Line 18: Please rethink the title of section 4.2. There can be no rainwater transport WITHIN different flow regimes. Suggestion: “Rainwater transport during the 4 different experiments”.

Page 9, Line 31: What were the snow conditions during those experiments? Please provide some information.

Page 10, Line 14: There is now evidence for water refreezing in the snowpack. So please be careful with such statements. Please mention that refreezing of water might have occurred. That the temperature of the snow pack (mention temp again) is most likely not cold enough that refreezing was a very important process during experiment 1.

Page 10, Line 15: Please remove the “a” before liquid water.

Page 10, Line 19: “in contrast” instead of “to the contrary”.

Page 11, Line 1: The “indeed” here sound a bit strange.

Page 11, Lines 9-11. The explanation of the results from the sensitivity analysis should be presented in the results section and explained there in more detail.

Page 11, Line 19+20: Please present those results in the results section. How similar were the results etc.

Page 11, Line 24: deuterium enriched water

Page 11, Line 25. There is no evidence form the results that there was refreezing. Please revise this sentence.

Page 11, Lines 29+35: The word “share” should be replaced by fractions or proportions.

Page 12, Line 5: “.. is available…”

Table 1: Dischma en? Please remove.

Figure 4: It is hardly possible to distinguish between the colors of the different lines (snow average, rain) here. Again you clearly show here that there was melt prior to the sprinkling in experiment 1. So please mention this in the text!

Figure 5: please revise the figure caption: “…during all sprinkling experiments.”, for example.

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ED: Publish subject to minor revisions (further review by Editor) (12 Jul 2017) by Markus Weiler

AR by Roman Juras on behalf of the Authors (31 Jul 2017) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Publish as is (09 Aug 2017) by Markus Weiler

AR by Roman Juras on behalf of the Authors (18 Aug 2017) Manuscript

Short summary

This research investigates the rainwater dynamics in the snowpack under artificial rain-on-snow events. Deuterium-enriched water was sprayed on the isolated snowpack and rainwater was further identified in the runoff. We found that runoff from cold snowpack was created faster than from the ripe snowpack. Runoff from the cold snowpack also contained more rainwater compared to the ripe snowpack. These results are valuable for further snowpack runoff forecasting.