Method for Producing Columnar Ice in Laboratory and Its Application

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Dear authors

The manuscript ( water-3164337) is a combination of simulation and experimental work for preparing columnar ice in laboratory and study the formation of ice in cold and windy conditions of polar regions. The manuscript conception and writing are good, there is only few issues to address before publication. I hope that the following notes could be helpful  

1) At the beginning of the introduction, you explain that one could prepare either granular ice or columnar ice based with different structural properties and then in your experiment you immediately suppose that you form columnar ice without presenting any structural study as X rays Diffraction of the formed ice crystals. So could you justify or explain to the reader the kind of the formed ice

2) Could you please, change the color scale of figures 7 and 8 and make them more clear with less numbers and bigger size :

3) the measured grain size is millimetric while in other crystalline materials it is often micrometric , could you explain to the reader this particularity of ice.

4) is there any theoretical study about the relation grain size-wind speed ?

Best Regards

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

My concerns and questions are as follows:

What is columnar ice and why does Figure 14 reveal the columnar character of ice?

Even though the authors mention refs 28 and 42, a short explanation on the methods mentioned in the sentence

"Thin ice sections attached to glass slides are observed under polarized light, with sections categorized as either horizontal or vertical based on their orientation relative to the ice growth direction."

would be welcome.

What is the equivalent circular diameter method?

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf