The Components of the Glacial Runoff of the Tsambagarav Massif from Stable Water Isotope Data
, Kirill V. Chistyakov 1, Ilya V. Volkov 1, Alexey A. Ekaykin 1,2, Arina N. Veres 1,2, Igor V. Tokarev 3, Natalya B. Shtykova 1 and Tatiana A. Andreeva 1Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
The abstract should include a better summary of the quantitative results
Hydrograph separation (equation 2): what about groundwater contributions?
Author Response
Dear Reviewer! Thank you very much for your remarks. You can find our answers in attached file.
Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
The authors tried to improve the revised manuscript giving more details about the method of estimating the contribution of glacier and snow-firn components. However, the presentation is still very poor. The manuscript needs drastic change in presentation and English improvement before considering for publication. It is full of unnecessary descriptions while important information are missing in many places. Also, unnecessary paragraph separation makes it difficult to read. It needs a thorough proof reading by an expert in the subject as well as in English. More details are given below:
L 20-21: Instead of giving the upper limit of the snow and firn contribution authors should provide the range of the contributions of the two sources.
L 25: replace “investigation of structure of water balance of” by “understanding the water balance in snow and glacier fed”
L 28: mention the annual rainfall in the region
L 28: plays a special role in maintaining the economic status of the…
L 29: Therefore, it is important to understand the contribution of water from different sources to model the possible cause of climate change on the future water supply.
L 31-34: Replace with “Stable isotopes are powerful tools to identify and quantify the Gcontribution of waters from different sources in a river”
L 40: what authors mean by ‘…isotopic fractionation on the results of isotopic separation..’
L 37-40: rephrase this paragraph
L 43-46: rephrase the sentence
L 46: In all the above mentioned studies, the emphasis was…
L 48-49: how the deep ice core drilling make the study interesting?
L 56: what is structure of melt water?
L 58-59: ‘…glacier runoff of the Tsambagrav massif to determine the contribution of glacier ice and seasonal snow….”
L 60: stable water isotopic composition (d18O and dD)
L 89: Why glacier no. 7 is so important, any specific reason?
L 95: ‘…observations were made at two temporary stations.’
L 97-99: rephrase the sentence
L 110: Discharge measurements were made…
L 111: during the period
L 139: remove ‘which is satisfactory for this study’
L 146: replace with ‘Partitioning of the water from the two components were made using the following mixing equation’
L153-154: remove the first sentence
Table 1: On average the d18O values of 2018 are lower, any reason?
L 164-165: for such a short term measurement, do authors expect any dependence of isotopic values on temperature?
L 173: what is average mineralization?
L 178: provide the isotopic data of precipitation also. Why the precipitation is not significant in the river water? Is it because of less precipitation in the region?
L 186-187: correct the sentence
L 198: why isotopic composition of snow/firn is different from the glacier?
L 230: what do you mean by maximal?
Table 3: Instead of making three columns authors can present the data in one column just giving the average and standard deviation of the estimates. The standard deviation can be estimated using error propagation of the mixing equation (2).
L 240-244: why snow/firn are formed only in the warm season and why glacier ice form in both the seasons?
L 267: what is stock forming component?
The whole discussion section needs a thorough restructuring.
L 328: what is angular coefficient?
L 344-345: remove the sentence
L 346-354: Conclusions look like results, make it concise
Author Response
Dear Reviewer! Thank you very much for your remarks. You can find our answers in attached file.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Round 2
Reviewer 1 Report
The text in this version is slightly improved but the figures are
still poor quality. My opinion is the same as before (major revisions).
Author Response
Dear reviewer! You can find our answer in attached file.
Author Response File: 
Author Response.docx
Reviewer 2 Report
English is still not up to the mark. I urge authors to improve the English language. Please use the present and past tense consistently. Discussion section is still very poorly written. Some obvious mistakes, mostly related to English are pointed out below:
L#21: changed from 20% to 30%? Is it change between 2016 and 2017 or something else, mention clearly.
L#41: carried out for several years….
L#43-44: remove ‘and the effect of isotopic fractionation (changes of isotopic content during melting) on
the results of isotopic separation’
L#47: July to August of which year(s)
L#49-51: The two sentences are contradictory: in the first sentence author mentioned that ‘role of glacier systems in the nourishing of the studied rivers was evaluated using water isotope data’ but in the later sentence they mentioned that the focus of the study was on ‘assessing the contribution of groundwater to the runoff’.
L#56: based on the drilling results…..
L#58: … of the formation period…
L#72: plain view
L#73: 4208 m high
L#74: …everywhere are above 3600 m altitude
L#75: recent report (2015) showed that there were 67 glaciers in the Tsambagarav with a total area of 68.41 km2 and the weighted average equilibrium line of altitude (ELA) was about 3,750 m [15].
L#92: estimated to be 270 mm
L#94: objectives of the study was…
L#124: (22 – 27 July, 2017)
L#126: 8 oC (2nd August) to 16 oC (29th July)
L#141: stable isotopic ratios (d18O and dD) were measured at the AARI’s ….
L#142: … using a Picarro L2120
L143: … a laboratory standard…
Table 1: Glacier No. instead of No. of Glaciers
L#228: hydrograph separation was made according to the mixing equation (2). Marge the two paragraphs
L#248: Fig 5 presents differences in the meteoric water lines not in isotopic compositions
L#254: remove ‘which is expressed in its heavy isotopic composition’
L#257: ‘…not well-preserved…’
Discussion section needs to be rewritten. In present condition, the whole section consists of scattered discussion without any smooth flow. The English in this section needs drastic improvement.
Author Response
Dear reviewer! You can find our answer in attached file.
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
