Obtaining sub-daily new snow density from automated measurements in high mountain regions

Helfricht, Kay; Hartl, Lea; Koch, Roland; Marty, Christoph; Olefs, Marc

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-22-2655-2018

Articles | Volume 22, issue 5

https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-22-2655-2018

© Author(s) 2018. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-22-2655-2018

© Author(s) 2018. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 22, issue 5

Research article

|

04 May 2018

Research article |

| 04 May 2018

Obtaining sub-daily new snow density from automated measurements in high mountain regions

Kay Helfricht, Lea Hartl, Roland Koch, Christoph Marty, and Marc Olefs

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Final revised paper (published on 04 May 2018)
Supplement to the final revised paper
Preprint (discussion started on 06 Oct 2017)
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

RC1: 'Review of Obtaining sub-daily new snow density from automated measurement in high mountain regions', Anonymous Referee #1, 13 Nov 2017
- AC1: 'Response on review by Anonymous Referee #1', Kay Helfricht, 04 Dec 2017
RC2: 'Comments on “Obtaining sub-daily new snow density from automated measurements in high mountain regions” by Helfricht et al. submitted for HESSD.', Anonymous Referee #2, 16 Nov 2017
- AC2: 'Response on comments by Anonymous Referee #2', Kay Helfricht, 04 Dec 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) (18 Dec 2017) by Thom Bogaard

AR by Kay Helfricht on behalf of the Authors (26 Jan 2018) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Referee Nomination & Report Request started (31 Jan 2018) by Thom Bogaard

RR by Anonymous Referee #2 (05 Feb 2018)

Suggestions for revision or reasons for rejection

The manuscript "Obtaining sub-daily new snow density from automate measurements in high mountain regions" by Helfricht et al. was reevaluated for possible publication. I appreciate the work the authors did to improve readability and data presentation. Most of my concerns were addressed.
However, some points I recommended to change have not been addressed yet:

- I still consider that subchapters especially for Results and Discussion will improve understanding and readability significantly. At the current stage, you lack a clear structure for this section. For instance results for the parameterizations are already discussed at P7 L24ff and all after P9 L18. However, at P7 L32, you discuss data filtering and minimum requirements. This is all very confusing. Most of P9 L18ff could be incorporated into a subsection parameterizations or similar.
In the introduction, you state 3 main questions this work should address. So why don't you structure Results and Discussion such that you answer those questions. By the way, question #2 is not even mentioned/ answered in the conclusion.

- I still consider redundancies as major problem. You even name the redundancies in your manuscript: e.g. P9 L29-30 and many other occurrences - Fig. 3 AND 7 AND Table 5; same page L21: Fig. 3 AND 7 AND 8 AND Table 5. What is the purpose of Figs. 7 and 8 next to Tab. 5. I absolutely cannot detect any benefit from those 2 Figures apart from the fact that they are hard to read.

- Same for supplemental Figs S17-S24. You reference those Figs once in the whole manuscript, however they do not provide any additional information. The fact that regressions are poorly constrained/ not present is documented by Tables 3 and 4. In addition, you spend a significant part of the discussion section on the topic of linear regression between parameters (without mentioning such issue as major point of your manuscript). The presentation of 2 tables and EIGHT additional figures in the supplement - apart from the fact that the references in P8 L17 are wrong – Is certainly not beneficial. Again, I highly recommend to shorten!

- Consistency is still an issue. Stations still have various labels in the supplementary material!

Some other revisions I highly recommend:
P1 L21, L22 please quantify in the abstract: The terms "partly visible", "crucial parameter" don't provide any information to the reader.
P1 L25 for better investigations...? for more reliable investigations...?
P2 L15 it is recommended to provide either the first reference for some statement or the most relevant (Gubler 1981 is probably more suitable as reference here doi:10.3189/S002214300001131X)
P7 L27 better: ...parameterizations overestimate \rho_{HN} in comparison with values computed....
P7 L28-29 Please rephrase this statement. It is really hard to get what you would like to express here.
P8 L4ff Fig. 4 just presents data distribution for station KRO!
P8 L6 where do you show the hourly resolution? ... change substantially from one hour to the next... This is not documented in this Fig, at least for my understanding.
P8 L8-11 rephrase impossible to read!
P8 L32ff remove the statement "Therefore,..." This is not a goal of the study so no need for describing that something hasn't been performed.
P8 L37 wind speeds WERE observed... at WFJ station. The remaining part of the sentence is just another redundant phrase.
P8 L41 \rho_{HN} remove the point and insert space!
P9 L1 Snow grains are fragmented...
P9 L41 Space after brackets
P9 L41 Essentially, ....fundamental relation between snow density and TA. This statement contradicts all your regression data and previous statements on regressions!

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RR by Anonymous Referee #1 (04 Mar 2018)

ED: Publish subject to minor revisions (review by editor) (21 Mar 2018) by Thom Bogaard

AR by Kay Helfricht on behalf of the Authors (06 Apr 2018) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Publish as is (20 Apr 2018) by Thom Bogaard

AR by Kay Helfricht on behalf of the Authors (20 Apr 2018)

Short summary

We calculated hourly new snow densities from automated measurements. This time interval reduces the influence of settling of the freshly deposited snow. We found an average new snow density of 68 kg m⁻³. The observed variability could not be described using different parameterizations, but a relationship to temperature is partly visible at hourly intervals. Wind speed is a crucial parameter for the inter-station variability. Our findings are relevant for snow models working on hourly timescales.