Using MODIS estimates of fractional snow cover area to improve streamflow forecasts in interior Alaska

Bennett, Katrina E.; Cherry, Jessica E.; Balk, Ben; Lindsey, Scott

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-23-2439-2019

Articles | Volume 23, issue 5

https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-23-2439-2019

© Author(s) 2019. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-23-2439-2019

© Author(s) 2019. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 23, issue 5

Research article

|

21 May 2019

Research article |

| 21 May 2019

Using MODIS estimates of fractional snow cover area to improve streamflow forecasts in interior Alaska

Katrina E. Bennett, Jessica E. Cherry, Ben Balk, and Scott Lindsey

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Final revised paper (published on 21 May 2019)
Supplement to the final revised paper
Preprint (discussion started on 09 May 2018)
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: 'Referee report', Edward Bair, 16 May 2018
- AC1: 'Response to reviewer #1', Katrina Bennett, 19 Sep 2018
RC2: 'Comments on Using MODIS estimates of fractional snow cover extent to improve streamflow forecasts in Interior Alaska by Bennett et al.', Anonymous Referee #2, 11 Jun 2018
- AC2: 'Response to reviewer #2', Katrina Bennett, 19 Sep 2018
RC3: 'Review of "Using MODIS estimates of fractional snow cover extent to improve streamflow forecasts in Interior Alaska', Stephen Déry, 12 Jun 2018
- AC3: 'Response to reviewer #3', Katrina Bennett, 19 Sep 2018

Peer-review completion

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

ED: Reconsider after major revisions (further review by editor and referees) (08 Oct 2018) by Shraddhanand Shukla

AR by Katrina Bennett on behalf of the Authors (03 Dec 2018) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Referee Nomination & Report Request started (20 Dec 2018) by Shraddhanand Shukla

RR by Stephen Déry (26 Dec 2018)

RR by Anonymous Referee #2 (16 Jan 2019)

Suggestions for revision or reasons for rejection

The authors answered my comments very detailed and revised sufficiently. I have some minor and mainly technical comments that should be considered before publication, which can be found below.

P2L9 change “aerial depletion curve-derived extent of snow cover” to “extent of snow cover derived by aerial depletion curves”
P2L17 “is of value --> “valuable “
P2L22 consider using another word for “tuned”
P6L6 nearest neighbor – no capitals
P6L24-L29 equation 1 (not 2);please refer to the equation and do not embed it in the sentence. For instance like this: delete “The standard division by viewable gap fraction,”
SCAfadj (henceforth referred to simply as fSCA) is the fSCA adjusted for canopy cover (Equation 1). where Fveg is the tree cover percentage and SCAf is the unadjusted SCA data.
P7L16/17 write “…as a coefficient, C (equation2).”
P7L21 consider renaming “elev” to avoid confusion with “ELEV” from the SNOW17 model
P8L6 6°/100m (not 1000!)
P8L14 hrs -->hr
P14L5 delete “shown in Figure3” add (Figure 3) at the end of the sentence
P14L12-14 This sentence appears to be incomplete please revise; delete “shown in”
P16L21 delete “but not all”
P16L26 delete “or improved”
P16L30 interior
P16L35 change “shown in the Liu study” to “in Liu et al. (2013)
P17L3 “is of value --> “valuable “
P18L6/7 Delete as shown in Figure 4, add (Figure4) at the end of the sentence
P18L32 Delete “system
P19L6 Change “it” to “is”; break sentence in two
P19L29 these references should have been used already in the introduction part (and maybe also only there)

Table1: Please change the unit of Q to m3/s.
The caption does not read really consistent. Consider this proposal:
“Sub-basin characteristics, including name, sub-basin ID, area, elevation mean (range), average monthly temperature, T, for January (July), average seasonal total precipitation for winter (November-February) (spring (March-June)), annual average daily discharge Q, slope basin units (lower, N=north and S=south), land cover (based on majority cover values*). T, P, and Q calculated from the 2000-2010 water years.”

Table 3: Please, check the values in cell SCF/Max there appear 3 values overprinted.
Is the unit of DYGM not per time since it is a rate?

Table 4: Delete “(Per., 1999-2010)” in conflict with last sentence of the caption.
Table5: Add “upper (U)” to explain the “U” in the table; Change bolded to bold

Figure 4: p5L24 open bracket before “blue”

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ED: Publish subject to minor revisions (review by editor) (16 Jan 2019) by Shraddhanand Shukla

AR by Katrina Bennett on behalf of the Authors (07 Feb 2019) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Publish as is (12 Mar 2019) by Shraddhanand Shukla

Short summary

Remotely sensed snow observations may improve operational streamflow forecasting in remote regions, such as Alaska. In this study, we insert remotely sensed observations of snow extent into the operational framework employed by the US National Weather Service’s Alaska Pacific River Forecast Center. Our work indicates that the snow observations can improve snow estimates and streamflow forecasting. This work provides direction for forecasters to implement remote sensing in their operations.