Snow Patches and Their Influence on Coastal Erosion at Baydaratskaya Bay Coast, Kara Sea, Russian Arctic

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Snow patches play a critical role in the Arctic coastal erosion. This paper by Aleksyutina et al. aims to assess the impact of snow patches on coastal erosion and temperature regime at the southern coast of the Kara Sea, based field observations and numerical simulations. The manuscript is well organized and writing, which presents an interesting coastal world of ice and snow and discusses it in depth. In my opinion, it deserved to be published in the Water after minor revision.

The authors should consider the following points when revision:

1. Line 13, here snow bank should be used with a plural form (snow banks).
2. Line 58, “sea patches” may be a typo, should be modified to “snow patches”.
3. The drilling time for the two boreholes (1 and 2) needs to be specified in the section of fieldwork.
4. How the equations (1), (2) and (4) come from?
5. The elevation scales of profiles 1-4 at Figure 5 are not marked.
6. Please note that the numbers of the two sections of “4. Discussion” and “5. Conclusions” should be “5. Discussion” and “6. Conclusions”, respectively.

Author Response

Dear reviewer,

Thank you for the valuable comments and advice. All comments were accepted and corrected. We hope this helped us to improve the manuscript.

As for equations (1) and (2), they are well-known and they are modifications of the Stefan formula, taking into account the presence of insulating cover (in our case, snow) on the surface. It base on the heat balance. Do I need to deduce these equations in detail? Or it is enough to give a reference link?

 

Best regards,

Daria

Reviewer 2 Report

Dear authors,

thank you very much for the manuscript. The combination of field observations with numerical modelling to determine critical snow depth is a very interesting approach and seem well suited to be applicable to a greater range of (permafrost influenced) arctic coasts. In my opinion, the manuscript is already of high quality and needs only minor changes. Please see the following comments as suggestions:

Line 67: since only one key site exist, use "is displayed by a star"

Line 98-99: use "satellite GNSS receivers from Trimble"

Line 107: use "tachymeter"

Line 160: "kg/m³" without blanks

Line 162: replace "occuring" with "they occur"

Line 166: Suggestion: "The numerical model assumes that the terrace cliff slopes 45° horizontally"

Line 169: "soil profile" instead of "surface"

Line 192: use "K_sn"

Table 2: Why is only "sandy silt" mentioned and not sand and clay?

Line 241: I would prefer "the bars show the cummulative sum of..."

Line 255: "snow thickness varies ..."

Line 258: "which means the snow thickness ...."

Line 260: Replace "Under the snow" with "Below the snowpack"

Line 269: Do you mean "profile" instead of "column"?

Line 272: Replace "equal down the profile" with "constant over the whole profile"

Line 273: "water-saturated"

Figure 10: describe what is shown on the pictures a and b

Line 300: add space "R = 2.0-2.5"

Line 310: Suggestion "this means that theoretically taliks can form"

Line 344: I don't understand what "just usual snow cover 0.5 m thickness" means. Are they usually 0.5 m thick?

Line 346: "begin" or better use "start"

Line 353: Replace "Zero temperature" with "A temperature of zero ..."

Line 373: please stick to the numbered referencing

Line 386: Replace "approximate values" by "approximations"

Line 395: use "melting period of snow patch"

Whish you all the best!

Author Response

Dear reviewer,

Thank you for the valuable comments and advice. All comments were accepted and corrected. We hope this helped us to improve the manuscript.

Please find below the answers to your separate comments:
Table 2: Why is only "sandy silt" mentioned and not sand and clay?
- We considered silty sands in this study because these are sediments, which are most typical for the study region. Apart from that, coring has shown the presence of sandy silt under the beach sand. If we had considered other soil types during modeling, the size of the talik size would differ slightly: in the case of sands, it would be larger compared to sandy silt, in the case of loams it would be smaller. 

Line 344: I don't understand what "just usual snow cover 0.5 m thickness" means. Are they usually 0.5 m thick?
- For this region, the typical average thickness of snow cover is 0.3-0.5 m, however, these values are typical for meteorological stations, situated on open flat surfaces. For laidas, the thickness of snow cover is similar, although in depressions it may be larger.

In the manuscript we replaced "just usual snow cover... etc." with "Snow patches almost are almost absent on the beach near the laida; on these surfaces, regular snow cover of 0.3 m thickness is present. Such thickness of snow cover is comparable to the average snow thickness registered at meteorological stations in the study area, which are situated within open flatlands [3]"

 

Best regards,

Daria

Reviewer 3 Report

Except the language issues, I would like to reccomend the accpetance of this manuscript.

Author Response

We have tried to fix the language issues according to your recommendations and the recommendations of the other reviewer.

Thank you for your positive assessment of our manuscript