The influence of surface characteristics, topography and continentality on mountain permafrost in British Columbia

Hasler, A.; Geertsema, M.; Foord, V.; Gruber, S.; Noetzli, J.

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-9-1025-2015

Articles | Volume 9, issue 3

https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-9-1025-2015

© Author(s) 2015. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-9-1025-2015

© Author(s) 2015. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.

Articles | Volume 9, issue 3

Research article

|

20 May 2015

Research article |

| 20 May 2015

The influence of surface characteristics, topography and continentality on mountain permafrost in British Columbia

A. Hasler, M. Geertsema, V. Foord, S. Gruber, and J. Noetzli

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Final revised paper (published on 20 May 2015)
Supplement to the final revised paper
Preprint (discussion started on 05 Sep 2014)
Supplement to the preprint

Interactive discussion

Status: closed

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

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RC C1980: 'review of Hasler et al.', Anonymous Referee #1, 07 Oct 2014
RC C2415: 'Comments on "The Influence of Surface Characteristics, Topography, and Continentality on Mountain Permafrost in British Columbia"', Anonymous Referee #2, 21 Nov 2014
AC C2919: 'Authors reply on referee comments #1 and #2', Andreas Hasler, 20 Jan 2015

Peer-review completion

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

AR by Andreas Hasler on behalf of the Authors (16 Feb 2015) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Referee Nomination & Report Request started (23 Feb 2015) by Andreas Kääb

RR by Anonymous Referee #1 (11 Mar 2015)

RR by Anonymous Referee #2 (20 Mar 2015)

Suggestions for revision or reasons for rejection

This is now become a clearly written paper. The paper reports on unique field observations and ground temperature measurements from seven permafrost field sites in British Columbia, which brought a new knowledge on mountain permafrost behavior in this region. The paper provide important results on the region-specific variation of the surface and thermal offsets, dependent at micro- and meso-scale gradients in surface characteristics and topography. The methodology is sound and the assumptions are clearly identified. The results are relevant for comparison with other mountain permafrost regions around the world.

I have only some few minor comments and suggestions:

The surface offsets show also high temporal variability at some sites. The temporal variability in the surface offset could be discusses in some more detail in respect to the SO uncertainty calculations and inter-annual variability among the sites in e.g. snow cover (e.g. L264). Do you have any idea on how representative your measurement period is and the presented SO values in respect to the last 20-30 years (see point below)?

L135-L141 and L262-265: The air temperature and precipitation trends referred to are quite old and end in 2003. Please include a more updated reference or make a simple own analyses based on climate data from nearby weather stations in the region. This would also add information on the specific temperature and precipitation and snow conditions during the actual observation period.

L352 and L365: Suggest to not using the term “thermal diode effect” since the thermal diode model” has been removed.

L348: Use “lower” air temperature (not colder)

Figures: For better readability please increase the size of fonts used at axis and legend in Figures 1, 2 and 3 (similar to the other figures).

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ED: Publish subject to minor revisions (Editor review) (26 Mar 2015) by Andreas Kääb

AR by Andreas Hasler on behalf of the Authors (16 Apr 2015) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Publish subject to technical corrections (20 Apr 2015) by Andreas Kääb

Short summary

In this paper we describe surface and thermal offsets derived from distributed measurements at seven field sites in British Columbia. Key findings are i) a small variation of the surface offsets between surface types; ii) small thermal offsets at all sites; iii) a clear influence of the micro-topography due to snow cover effects; iv) a north--south difference of the surface offset of 4°C in vertical bedrock and of 1.5–-3°C on open gentle slopes; v) only small macroclimatic differences.