Laboratory Observations of Preferential Flow Paths in Snow Using Upward-Looking Polarimetric Radar and Hyperspectral Imaging
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
Please see attached review document.
Comments for author File: 
Comments.pdf
Author Response
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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
Rather interesting work, though describing very specific situation. Nevertheless the work is of some interest.
Author Response
Thank you for reading and evaluating our manuscript. There were no comments to address.
Reviewer 3 Report
This is a very well written study documenting how radar underneath snowpack can less ambiguously track preferential meltwater flow with the aid of both co-polarized and cross polarized upward-looking radar. I believe it can be accepted for publication virtually as is. I have just a few minor comments the authors should consider.
- in sections 2.2 and 2.3 cold room snow melt experiments are described. In both cases the surrogate solar sources do not appear to change orientation with respect to the snow volume with time as is the case with the sun's movement across the sky during the day. What effect might a temporally changing heat/light source position have on the preferential meltwater flows?
- Clean snowpack can reflect away much of the UV/VIS/NIR solar energy it receives; it actually is more efficiently forced into melting via absorption of IR energy emitted from objects (e.g. rocks, trees) that absorb the UV/VIS/NIR light from the sun and re-emit it in the IR. And warm cloud layers (and rain) can also far more evenly melt snow pack than the sun. The authors should consider commenting on how these real geophysical-geometry energy interactions could influence actual mountain snowpack preferential meltwater flows, and how having both co-polarized and cross-polarized capabilities in an upward-looking radar installation could be useful in these situations.
- line 332: there are two periods at the end of the sentence.
Author Response
See attached PDF.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
