Late Pleistocene–Holocene ground surface heat flux changes reconstructed from borehole temperature data (the Urals, Russia)

Demezhko, D. Y.; Gornostaeva, A. A.

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-11-647-2015

Articles | Volume 11, issue 4

https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-11-647-2015

© Author(s) 2015. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-11-647-2015

© Author(s) 2015. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.

Articles | Volume 11, issue 4

Research article

|

09 Apr 2015

Research article |

| 09 Apr 2015

Late Pleistocene–Holocene ground surface heat flux changes reconstructed from borehole temperature data (the Urals, Russia)

D. Y. Demezhko and A. A. Gornostaeva

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Final revised paper (published on 09 Apr 2015)
Preprint (discussion started on 29 Aug 2014)

Interactive discussion

Status: closed

AC: Author comment | RC: Referee comment | SC: Short comment | EC: Editor comment

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- Supplement

RC C1512: 'How strong the evidence?', Jean-Claude Mareschal, 19 Sep 2014
RC C1919: 'Too many questions left unaddressed', Anonymous Referee #2, 13 Nov 2014
EC C2009: 'Editor's Comment', Volker Rath, 01 Dec 2014
AC C2097: 'Reply to the reviewers', Dmitry Demezhko, 16 Dec 2014

Peer-review completion

AR: Author's response | RR: Referee report | ED: Editor decision

AR by Dmitry Demezhko on behalf of the Authors (13 Jan 2015) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Referee Nomination & Report Request started (14 Jan 2015) by Volker Rath

RR by Jean-Claude Mareschal (03 Feb 2015)

RR by Anonymous Referee #2 (06 Feb 2015)

Suggestions for revision or reasons for rejection

The revised version would still have to be edited by a native speaker. I include below a few corrections that I spotted in the first two pages, but this really goes through the whole manuscript. This, being a revised version, is annoying for a reviewer, because it distracts from focusing on the content of the manuscript.

Regarding this content, I still have some concern about how the issue of the time-scale re-calibration is presented, and actually accomplished. The authors responded that recalibration is usually introduced in may glacial-interglacial records. Closer to the truth is that it was routinely used decades ago, but now it is much contended. After reading the relevant paragraphs it is not clear to be how the recalibration is done. Aspects that should be clearly stated in the manuscript, since they are relevant for the main conclusions:

- is the re-calibration achieved just by changing the value of the diffusivity i.e. replacing one single constant value by another single constant value ? How is the optimal value found and what is the uncertainty in the change of the diffusivity. I interpret that this is what the authors do, and then I would agree with them that with just one degree of freedom, the agreement is remarkable. But I nor sure whether the diffusivity is assume to be a function of time, which offers many more possibilities to tune any curve to the desired result.

- the manuscript should also stress that the correlation between the SHF and solar insolation (0.99) is achieved only after 'tuning' and this it cannot be be directly interpreted as an 'observed' physical relationship between both. The estimation of the 'climate sensitivity' is thus probably biased high and its uncertainties are too optimistic. The authors acknowledge these aspects in their response, but I cannot find them in the revised version.

- The authors also compare the GST and SHF to the reconstructions of CO2 concentrations a,d conclude that the GST is much closer to the CO2 concentrations, but not so much to the SHF. How is this physically possible ? The authors mention in their response that the radiative forcing first changes the heat flux and later the temperature. If they conclude that CO2 is not having an affect on the heat flux, it should have no physical effect on temperatures either. Perhaps this is what the authors are trying to say but it is, at least for me, not clear at all (it may be a linguistic problem though, and this is why I think that copy-editing should not be reserved for the final version).

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ED: Publish subject to minor revisions (review by Editor) (11 Feb 2015) by Volker Rath

AR by Dmitry Demezhko on behalf of the Authors (20 Feb 2015) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Publish subject to technical corrections (22 Mar 2015) by Volker Rath

Technical/language corrections suggested by the editor:

P1 L11:
"We use a geothermal....history earlier obtained in the Middle Urals ......"

P1 L16:
delete bracket

P1 L26:
"However, some authors..."

P2 L12-15:
adapt to true content.
- method
- GST observed
- transformation
- interpretatiom

P2 L19:
delete "the" it is "Fourier's equation"

Sect 2:
When introducing physical quantities, give units.

P3 L5, end,
comma missing

P3 L9:
"...related to real time by t..., for a constant time interval..."

P3 L12ff:
" Using the recurrence relation ... the Di can be exstimated for each interval
of the temperature curve. The corresponding instantaneous heat flux calues can then
ne calculated as..... The so obtained SHF...."

P4 L11:
Symbol after pi/4?

P4 L22ff:
" As an input to our SHF reconstruction, we used the GSTH obtained from the Urals superdeep borehole
SG-4 (...) which was presented in an earlier contribution buyr Demezhko & Shchapov (2011). "

P5 L26:
"The minimum event length which can be resolved in their GSTH reconstruction has been estimated by ....to be ..."

P7ff:
Use numbers (enumerate in latex) or bullet points (itemize) for the list in the Discussion/conclusion

P7 L27:
"A procedure of running averages with changing window lengths was applied to the insolation......in order to
obtain a cireve comaparable to ..."

P8 L1-5:
Maybe add a word on the particular rock types & a more general reference on the diffusivity values?

@InCollection{Clauser2006,
Title = {{G}eothermal {E}nergy},
Author = {C. Clauser},
Booktitle = {{L}andolt-{B}{\"o}rnstein, Group VIII {\"{a}}dvanced Material and Technologies{"}, Vol. 3 {"}Energy Technologies{"}, Subvol. C {"}Renewable Energies{"}},
Publisher = {{S}pringer {V}erlag, {H}eidelberg-{B}erlin},
Year = {2006},
Editor = {K. Heinloth},
Pages = {480--595}
}

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AR by Dmitry Demezhko on behalf of the Authors (27 Mar 2015) Author's response Manuscript