Tritium as a hydrological tracer in Mediterranean precipitation events

Juhlke, Tobias R.; Sültenfuß, Jürgen; Trachte, Katja; Huneau, Frédéric; Garel, Emilie; Santoni, Sébastien; Barth, Johannes A. C.; van Geldern, Robert

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-20-3555-2020

Articles | Volume 20, issue 6

https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-20-3555-2020

© Author(s) 2020. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-20-3555-2020

© Author(s) 2020. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 20, issue 6

Research article

|

25 Mar 2020

Research article |

| 25 Mar 2020

Tritium as a hydrological tracer in Mediterranean precipitation events

Tobias R. Juhlke, Jürgen Sültenfuß, Katja Trachte, Frédéric Huneau, Emilie Garel, Sébastien Santoni, Johannes A. C. Barth, and Robert van Geldern

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Final revised paper (published on 25 Mar 2020)
Preprint (discussion started on 26 Aug 2019)

Interactive discussion

Status: closed

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

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- Supplement

AC1: 'Clarification of Methods', Tobias Juhlke, 27 Sep 2019
RC1: 'Review on manuscript acp-2019-725', Anonymous Referee #1, 24 Oct 2019
RC2: 'review', Anonymous Referee #2, 18 Nov 2019

Peer-review completion

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

AR by Tobias Juhlke on behalf of the Authors (19 Dec 2019)

ED: Referee Nomination & Report Request started (10 Jan 2020) by Heini Wernli

RR by Anonymous Referee #2 (28 Jan 2020)

Suggestions for revision or reasons for rejection

The authors submitted an improved version of their original submission. The issues raised in the original review were addressed and while some of them could not be solved with the existing data, the explanations clearly stated this.

Apart from a few technical comments (below) and one on the discussions, I have no other concerns.

Fig. 3 - perhaps it should be made clear in the caption that each vertical bar represents an event

Are the averages in fig. 2 calculated for periods of similar length (i.e., do all stations have data covering the full 2000-2016 period)?

Fig. 6. perhaps the regression lines could be color coded, as well?

Sampling: the authors sampled 42 events and state that "This number is a subset of all precipitation events that is expected to be representative of the total rainfall during the study period". It is not clear however how much of the rain falling during the study period has been sampled? How as representativeness determined? This should be clarified (in terms of volume percentages, perhaps?).

Conclusions vs discussions vs. response to reviewers.
by reading the response and the manuscript, it looks that the later is somehow less straightforward, with the general direction of the discussions being lost in the amount of data (measured and modeled). Further, the conclusions don't make justice to the discussions: they should be streamlined to better reflect the findings. For instance this paragraph form the response very nicely summarizes the findings, yet it is not expressed as such in manuscript. I suggest structure chapter 4.1 around 2-3 research questions/hypothesis and than resolve them and end the respective paragraph with a statement on the findings that should be further used in the "conclusion" (e.g., role of stratospheric input should be discussed in one single paragraph, not spread through the discussion of the regional sources).

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ED: Publish subject to minor revisions (review by editor) (31 Jan 2020) by Heini Wernli

AR by Tobias Juhlke on behalf of the Authors (08 Feb 2020) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Publish as is (12 Feb 2020) by Heini Wernli

AR by Tobias Juhlke on behalf of the Authors (14 Feb 2020)

Short summary

Tritium can serve as a useful tracer in the hydrological cycle; however, aspects of the distribution and exchange of tritium in the atmosphere are not completely understood. In particular, the movement of tritium from its natural origin in the upper atmosphere to its deposition onto the land surface by precipitation has to be quantified further. Therefore, this study collected precipitation event samples and used atmospheric models in order to improve knowledge regarding tritium dynamics.