Research on Glacier Changes and Their Influencing Factors in the Yigong Zangbo River Basin of the Tibetan Plateau, China, Based on ICESat-2 Data
, Xuepeng Zhang 1,4, Kunxin Wang 1, Yang Liu 1, Yongjie Wang 5, Peng Gou 1, Qi Luo 6 and Tianyu Zhou 1
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsIn this paper the seasonal fluctuations of selected glaciers in the southeastern Tibetan Plateau and their relationship with climate change are investigated. The results show that the selected glaciers in the Yigong Zangbo River Basin experienced high mass losses during the investigation period 2018-2023. The authors identify temperature as the primary meteorological driver of glacier changes in their study area, surpassing the impact of snowfall.
The manuscript presents new and interesting data and findings of relevance for the international scientific community. The topic of the manuscripts fits the scope of the journal Water.
The manuscript is clearly and concisely written and the findings are well presented. I have a few suggestions for additions which could further increase the potential scientific impact of this paper:
Both in the Introduction section and in the Discussion section the authors should refer to more existing studies from other parts of the world. This would help to put this work and the interesting findings more clearly into a global framework.
The investigation period 2018-2023 is rather short. The authors should critically discuss if the given length of their investigation period can be used to define a clear trend. The authors build their study on previous works, but this should be explained and discussed more clearly.
In the Conclusions section, wider implications being of interest for both the regional and the global community should be described and highlighted more clearly.
Author Response
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Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsThe study mainly researchs on Glacier Changes and Their Influencing Factors in the Yigong Zangbo River Basin of the Tibetan Plateau. The manuscript needs further revisions, and my opinions are as follows.
1. The abstract need be optimized to better clarify the new findings and contributions of this study.
2. line 69-72: The statement “current research on glacier changes mainly focuses on decadal and interannual variations, with relatively few studies on sea-sonal changes” in the manuscript is too absolute, and there have been many studies on seasonal changes in the ocean. Please refer to the relevant materials.
3. The abstract explicitly states the use of the Loess Plateau (STL) method for seasonal trend decomposition and analysis of its spatiotemporal characteristics. Finally, the comprehensive impact of meteorological factors such as temperature and snowfall on glacier changes was evaluated by combining the Extreme Gradient Boosting (XGBoost) model and Shapley Additive Interpretation (SHAP) model. However, in the last part of the introduction, there is no description of the causal relationship between the XGBoost model and SHAP model, which was briefly mentioned in the manuscript and lacks references.
4. Suggest putting Figure 1's a and b together. There is another image in the upper right corner of Figure 1, labeled as b, why not labeled as c?
5. The data URL of 2.2.1.2.2.2and 2.2.3 can be supplemented. The data introduction section in the manuscript is described in detail, which is the advantage of this manuscript.
6. In “3. Methods”, If the formulas in this section are for reference, please indicate the references. The schematic diagram of the XGBoost model can be added to section 3.3.1.
7. line 351-358: Snowfall and the GMC、 temperature and the GMC exhibit a cubic polynomial relationship. What is the reason for the low fitting degree? Please add a sentence to supplement.
8. The latitude, longitude, and icon font in Figure 10 are too small, they can be adjusted slightly larger.
9. The result “seasonal variation of glaciersis related to changes in temperature, snowfall and glacier surface temperature”. The existing research has already reached this conclusion. The author should analyze the research area and results of this article to draw corresponding conclusions. Please carefully consider and optimize the conclusions
10. Please check if all the reference formats in the manuscript are correct.
Author Response
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
