The influence of warm-season precipitation on the diel cycle of  the surface energy balance and carbon dioxide at a Colorado subalpine forest site

Burns, S. P.; Blanken, P. D.; Turnipseed, A. A.; Hu, J.; Monson, R. K.

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/bg-12-7349-2015

Articles | Volume 12, issue 23

https://doi.org/10.5194/bg-12-7349-2015

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

https://doi.org/10.5194/bg-12-7349-2015

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

Articles | Volume 12, issue 23

Research article

|

15 Dec 2015

Research article |

| 15 Dec 2015

The influence of warm-season precipitation on the diel cycle of the surface energy balance and carbon dioxide at a Colorado subalpine forest site

S. P. Burns, P. D. Blanken, A. A. Turnipseed, J. Hu, and R. K. Monson

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Final revised paper (published on 15 Dec 2015)
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Preprint (discussion started on 16 Jun 2015)
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Interactive discussion

Status: closed

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

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RC C3810: 'Interactive comment on "The effect of warm-season precipitation on the diel cycle of the surface energy balance and carbon dioxide at a Colorado subalpine forest site" by Burns et al.', Anonymous Referee #1, 24 Jul 2015
- AC C6621: 'Reply to Referee #1', Sean P. Burns, 16 Oct 2015
RC C4443: 'Review of Burns et al.,', Anonymous Referee #2, 18 Aug 2015
- AC C6622: 'Reply to Referee #2', Sean P. Burns, 16 Oct 2015
AC C6623: 'Summary of changes', Sean P. Burns, 16 Oct 2015

Peer-review completion

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

ED: Reconsider after major revisions (01 Nov 2015) by Paul Stoy

AR by Sean P. Burns on behalf of the Authors (05 Nov 2015) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Referee Nomination & Report Request started (07 Nov 2015) by Georg Wohlfahrt

RR by Anonymous Referee #1 (23 Nov 2015)

ED: Publish subject to minor revisions (Editor review) (23 Nov 2015) by Georg Wohlfahrt

I sent the revised manuscript to reviewer #1, who thankfully had agreed to be available for a second round of reviewing. In addition, I have given the manuscript a thorough read myself. While you convinced reviewer #1, who suggests accept as is, I have a few minor comments (see below), which I would like you to consider before accepting the manuscript. Most of the comments are targeted at further shortening the manuscript which is still very loooooooong and at times involves too much detail. In addition I suggest to revised the graphical presentation in two figures.

l. 32-35: could be removed
l. 41-48: this is a good place to shorten the paper by leaving it with „...in diverse ecosystems“ and including a couple of key references.
l. 63-65: if so, why this exhaustive treatment of the Birch effect?
l. 77-81: could be removed
l. 115-166: this sentence is quite lost here – remove?
l. 330-331: might be worth showing a key result to this end in the supplementary material
l. 560: which striking difference are you referring to – I didn’t get it
l. 602-603: this is not logical in my view; at the canopy-scale NEE reaches saturation when radiation is high – under cloudy skies radiation will be lower and thus NEE will remain the same (if radiation is still high enough to cause saturation) or lower; but I do not see how this sentence explains a higher NEE; the main issue clearly is that diffuse radiation is used more effectively by the canopy
l. 658-666: isn’t this section quite too detailed for the summary/conclusion? I suggest to remove
Figs. 10 and 13: here the symbols should either not be connected by lines as the x-axis scaling not a true measure of distance (and thus slopes of these lines cannot be interpreted) or be replaced by bar graph, which actually would be the better representation in this case

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AR by Sean P. Burns on behalf of the Authors (25 Nov 2015) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Publish as is (26 Nov 2015) by Georg Wohlfahrt

AR by Sean P. Burns on behalf of the Authors (01 Dec 2015)

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Short summary

The effect of warm-season precipitation on environmental conditions and ecosystem-scale fluxes at a high-elevation subalpine forest site was investigated. As would be expected (based on the surface energy balance), precipitation caused an increase in latent heat flux (evapotranspiration) and a decrease in sensible heat flux. The evaporative component of evapotranspiration was, on average, estimated to be around 6% in dry conditions and between 15-25% in partially wet conditions.