The triple oxygen isotope composition of phytoliths as a proxy of continental atmospheric humidity: insights from climate chamber and climate transect calibrations

Alexandre, Anne; Landais, Amarelle; Vallet-Coulomb, Christine; Piel, Clément; Devidal, Sébastien; Pauchet, Sandrine; Sonzogni, Corinne; Couapel, Martine; Pasturel, Marine; Cornuault, Pauline; Xin, Jingming; Mazur, Jean-Charles; Prié, Frédéric; Bentaleb, Ilhem; Webb, Elizabeth; Chalié, Françoise; Roy, Jacques

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/bg-15-3223-2018

Articles | Volume 15, issue 10

https://doi.org/10.5194/bg-15-3223-2018

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

https://doi.org/10.5194/bg-15-3223-2018

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

Articles | Volume 15, issue 10

Research article

|

31 May 2018

Research article |

| 31 May 2018

The triple oxygen isotope composition of phytoliths as a proxy of continental atmospheric humidity: insights from climate chamber and climate transect calibrations

Anne Alexandre, Amarelle Landais, Christine Vallet-Coulomb, Clément Piel, Sébastien Devidal, Sandrine Pauchet, Corinne Sonzogni, Martine Couapel, Marine Pasturel, Pauline Cornuault, Jingming Xin, Jean-Charles Mazur, Frédéric Prié, Ilhem Bentaleb, Elizabeth Webb, Françoise Chalié, and Jacques Roy

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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: 'RC: Review of “The triple oxygen isotope composition of phytoliths as a proxy of continental atmospheric humidity: insights from climate chamber and climate transect calibrations” by Alexandre A. et al. BGD.', Anonymous Referee #1, 10 Jan 2018
- AC1: 'Answer to reviewer #1', Anne Alexandre, 06 Mar 2018
RC2: 'Review', Anonymous Referee #2, 08 Feb 2018
- AC2: 'Answer to reviewer#2', Anne Alexandre, 06 Mar 2018

Peer-review completion

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

ED: Reconsider after major revisions (13 Mar 2018) by Aldo Shemesh

AR by Anne Alexandre on behalf of the Authors (19 Mar 2018) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Referee Nomination & Report Request started (21 Mar 2018) by Aldo Shemesh

RR by Anonymous Referee #2 (16 Apr 2018)

Suggestions for revision or reasons for rejection

The MS has improved much, but I still have some important concerns; now mainly about the calibration and referencing as well as about some conceptual aspects. There’s a bit of a mess in the 17O-business and things should be clarified with more articles coming out.

Mainly:

- Symbols θ and λ should be used with more care. We suggested a scheme that now becomes more and more accepted (Pack & Herwartz, 2014) with θ being used for a particular physical process (equilibrium or kinetic) and λ for regression on groups of materials NOT related through a well-understood single process and for the slope of a chosen reference line (then with index RL).

- The δ17O scaling to SMOW is still not clear. The authors cite studies that are either outdated or even did not analyze SMOW water. Be more careful here. You’re dealing with water - “rock” interaction, so rocks need to be really on SMOW scale (better SMOW-SLAP). That’s not trivial but can be done better than it appears in the current version of the manuscript. I put on remarks.

- Meteoric water lines are known to span a curve. Hence, a “line” should not be longer used! I attach a compilation of some recent meteoric water analyses (I guess there are even more published now):

- The kinetic fractionation in association with diffusion of vapor into the free atmosphere seems not to be considered as cause for variations of Δ’17O. Only the evaporation in leaves is considered. I may be wrong and the effect on the composition of the rain water is outbalanced by the larger effect due to evaporation in the leaves. A short comment on that would be welcome.

- In a few instances, still too many digits or precision are given.

With these concerns considered, I suggest publication.

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ED: Publish subject to technical corrections (16 Apr 2018) by Aldo Shemesh

AR by Anne Alexandre on behalf of the Authors (30 Apr 2018) Author's response Manuscript

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Short summary

There is a lack of proxies suitable for reconstructing, in a quantitative way, past changes in continental atmospheric humidity, which is a key climate parameter. Here, we demonstrate through climate chamber and climate transect calibrations that the triple oxygen isotope composition of phytoliths offers a potential for reconstructing changes in relative humidity.