The surface albedo of the Greenland Ice Sheet between 1982 and 2015 from the CLARA-A2 dataset and its relationship to the ice sheet's surface mass balance

Riihelä, Aku; King, Michalea D.; Anttila, Kati

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-13-2597-2019

Articles | Volume 13, issue 10

https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-13-2597-2019

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

https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-13-2597-2019

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

Articles | Volume 13, issue 10

Research article

|

07 Oct 2019

Research article |

| 07 Oct 2019

The surface albedo of the Greenland Ice Sheet between 1982 and 2015 from the CLARA-A2 dataset and its relationship to the ice sheet's surface mass balance

Aku Riihelä, Michalea D. King, and Kati Anttila

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Final revised paper (published on 07 Oct 2019)
Supplement to the final revised paper
Preprint (discussion started on 10 Apr 2019)
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', Anonymous Referee #1, 06 May 2019
- AC1: 'Author response to reviewer #1', Aku Riihelä, 20 Jun 2019
RC2: 'comments by J. Box', Jason Box, 31 May 2019
- AC2: 'Author response to Jason Box', Aku Riihelä, 20 Jun 2019

Peer-review completion

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

ED: Reconsider after major revisions (29 Jun 2019) by Mark Flanner

AR by Aku Riihelä on behalf of the Authors (02 Jul 2019) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Referee Nomination & Report Request started (10 Jul 2019) by Mark Flanner

RR by Jason Box (18 Jul 2019)

Suggestions for revision or reasons for rejection

Overall synopsis

Another revision further emphasizing the main points of the article, perhaps at the expense of un-necessary text, such as the very last paragraph, would increase the readability of the article.

In the first review, I questioned “Stroeve [2001, JGR] found NAO resonance, as one would expect. What about this study?”… I think that useful question remains unanswered. The summer NAO remains a likely strong predictor of albedo variability. Given the differences in albedo data employed here (black sky) vs blue sky in Stroeve (2001) and thus this topic should be more clearly addressed.

Sorry I didn’t pick this up earlier but, some solid justification for excluding September from the analysis is justified. The month of May is included. Why not September? The melt season extends into September for at least the southern half of the ice sheet.

Sorry I didn’t pick this up earlier but, some discussion of the following article is warranted because they also use an AVHRR Greenland product.
Tedesco, M., Doherty, S., Fettweis, X., Alexander, P., Jeyaratnam, J., and Stroeve, J.: The darkening of the Greenland ice sheet: trends, drivers, and projections (1981–2100), The Cryosphere, 10, 477-496, https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-10-477-2016, 2016.

Page 17 line 3 “outermost” relative to what?

Page 17 line 7, Conclusions … reference is made to “northeastern and eastern margins” then sentence two focuses on western ice sheet driver of albedo variability. So, the sentence could be split to be more clear. Then if no proposed candidate drivers for “northeastern and eastern margins” , state so.

Page 17 line 10, Conclusions …”the western and northern ice sheet margins intensified after 2000”… 1998 (and 1995) were warm summers too… I guess MERRA-2 data time series would show that? See Fettweis et al 2007 GRL Fig 2.

17 14 “where we propose…” is not a conclusion, is a hypothesis or otherwise speculative, suggest remove from Conclusions and place in discussion.

17 18 remove the un-needed “state of the art” and “latest” list MAR version number.

17 24 remove “This…” is speculative and not a conclusion.

17 28 explain in quantitative terms what is meant rather than “duress” which has a definition of “noun…threats, violence, constraints, or other action brought to bear on someone to do something against their will or better judgment.

17 30 “precipitation intensity and phase are most likely the strongest drivers of change manifested through…” speculative, remove and stick to firm conclusions of the study. … This whole paragraph seems un-necessary… Rather, I suggest focusing on the main points of the study which are extending the albedo record and what is the value of the AVHRR record, what does it tell us with that many more years of data?… how reliable is the AVHRR period before 2000? Is it possible to make conclusions on how reliable is the AVHRR period before 2000 or does the multi-satellite, vicarious calibration prevent that?

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RR by Anonymous Referee #1 (29 Aug 2019)

ED: Publish subject to minor revisions (review by editor) (30 Aug 2019) by Mark Flanner

AR by Aku Riihelä on behalf of the Authors (04 Sep 2019) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Publish as is (05 Sep 2019) by Mark Flanner

Short summary

We used a 1982–2015 time series of satellite observations to examine changes in surface reflectivity (albedo) of the Greenland Ice Sheet. We found notable decreases in albedo over most of the ice sheet margins in July and August, particularly over the west coast and between 2000 and 2015. The results indicate that significant melt now occurs in areas 50 to 100 m higher up the ice sheet relative to the early 1980s. The albedo decrease is consistent and covarying with modelled ice sheet mass loss.