Year-round simulated methane emissions from a permafrost ecosystem in Northeast Siberia

Castro-Morales, Karel; Kleinen, Thomas; Kaiser, Sonja; Zaehle, Sönke; Kittler, Fanny; Kwon, Min Jung; Beer, Christian; Göckede, Mathias

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/bg-15-2691-2018

Articles | Volume 15, issue 9

https://doi.org/10.5194/bg-15-2691-2018

© Author(s) 2018. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Special issue:

Changing Permafrost in the Arctic and its Global Effects in...

https://doi.org/10.5194/bg-15-2691-2018

© Author(s) 2018. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 15, issue 9

Research article

|

04 May 2018

Research article |

| 04 May 2018

Year-round simulated methane emissions from a permafrost ecosystem in Northeast Siberia

Karel Castro-Morales, Thomas Kleinen, Sonja Kaiser, Sönke Zaehle, Fanny Kittler, Min Jung Kwon, Christian Beer, and Mathias Göckede

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Final revised paper (published on 04 May 2018)
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Preprint (discussion started on 24 Jul 2017)
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Interactive discussion

Status: closed

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

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RC1: 'Review of manuscript by Castro-Morales et al.', Anonymous Referee #1, 22 Sep 2017
- AC1: 'Response to reviewer #1', Karel Castro-Morales, 21 Jan 2018
RC2: 'Karel Castro – Morales et al; Year round simulated methane emissions from a permafrost ecosystem in Northeast Siberia', Anonymous Referee #2, 20 Nov 2017
- AC2: 'Response to reviewer #1', Karel Castro-Morales, 21 Jan 2018

Peer-review completion

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

ED: Reconsider after major revisions (29 Jan 2018) by Paul Stoy

AR by Karel Castro-Morales on behalf of the Authors (05 Mar 2018) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Referee Nomination & Report Request started (06 Mar 2018) by Paul Stoy

RR by Anonymous Referee #3 (21 Mar 2018)

Suggestions for revision or reasons for rejection

The authors basically addressed two referees’ comments and revised manuscript accordingly. But I still have some comments below.

The author needs to carefully cite other studies. P2, 50: In Saunois et al. (2016), 4% is the ratio of the total emissions in the north of 60 °N to the global total emission from top-down inversions. P3, 80: Strictly, the cold season, instead of late autumn, CH4 emissions account for up to 50% of the annual emission, according to Zona et al. (2016).

P2, 50: The description of ‘soil topography’ is uncommon.

In my understanding, the methane production, oxidation and emissions were simulated for the saturated portion of each grid cell (P8, 275). But when the author calculated the chamber measurement, the emissions are from both from wet soil and dry soil (p13, 430). The author may explain. What is the portion of the emission from dry soil?

The author addressed the footprint comment by reviewer #1 in 455-460. This inundated fraction between 17.7%-19.9% will result in a much lower EC CH4 contributed by saturated area. However, in the CH4 comparison, the author did not apply these fractions (Figure 4 and 5). How much will this affect the model-EC bias?

Usually, the process-based CH4 modeling is constrained by observations globally or regionally. Even so, we can still see the large bias between observation and simulation in the local. Under this local condition, the biases of the inundation fraction and total CH4 emissions are remarkable. It is hard to convince the readers about the portion of CH4 emission via different pathways, as CH4 transport pathways are even weakly constrained. The author may not highlight the fraction of each pathway emission.

In this study, there are not different sites to represent the spatial heterogeneity to match climate reanalysis at a half-degree resolution. As we know, the climate reanalysis is one of the sources to the prediction uncertainty. Is it possible to try single-point simulation by using the climate forcing at the EC site?

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RR by Anonymous Referee #2 (23 Mar 2018)

ED: Publish subject to minor revisions (review by editor) (25 Mar 2018) by Paul Stoy

AR by Karel Castro-Morales on behalf of the Authors (02 Apr 2018) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Publish subject to minor revisions (review by editor) (06 Apr 2018) by Paul Stoy

AR by Karel Castro-Morales on behalf of the Authors (09 Apr 2018) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Publish as is (12 Apr 2018) by Paul Stoy

AR by Karel Castro-Morales on behalf of the Authors (13 Apr 2018)

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Short summary

We present year-round methane emissions from wetlands in Northeast Siberia that were simulated with a land surface model. Ground-based flux measurements from the same area were used for evaluation of the model results, finding a best agreement with the observations in the summertime emissions that take place in this region predominantly through plants. During winter, methane emissions through the snow contribute 4 % of the total annual methane budget, but these are still underestimated.