the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
| 21 Jul 2025
Summertime evaporation over two lakes in the Schirmacher oasis, East Antarctica
Abstract. The study quantified uncertainties in the bulk-aerodynamic method and combination formulas being applied in estimations of summertime evaporation over two lakes in the Schirmacher oasis, East Antarctica. The evaporation over the lakes was measured by the eddy-covariance (EC) technique during the austral summers (December–January) in 2017–2018 and 2019–2020. These direct measurements showed that summertime evaporation over two lakes varied from 0.3 to 5.0 mm d–1. Depending on the ice cover presence, the average evaporation varied from 1.6 ± 0.1 mm d–1 in December to 3.0 ± 0.2 mm d–1 in January–February. In summer, the lakes were warmer than the ambient air, and the largest day-to-day variations in evaporation were associated with variations in the wind speed. The EC measurements were used as a reference for evaluating the uncertainties of the indirect methods. The bulk aerodynamic method gave the most accurate estimates of evaporation over two lakes (of 6–8 %), and this method showed acceptable skill scores (by two selected criteria) in estimation of the daily evaporation during the lakes' ice breaking-up and open water periods. This method is recommended for hydrological (lake water balance) applications required for operational (short term) decision making. Most of the combination formulas underestimated the summertime evaporation by 27–73 %.
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RC1: 'Comment on egusphere-2025-1964', Anonymous Referee #1, 30 Aug 2025
The comment was uploaded in the form of a supplement: https://egusphere.copernicus.org/preprints/2025/egusphere-2025-1964/egusphere-2025-1964-RC1-supplement.pdfCitation: https://doi.org/
10.5194/egusphere-2025-1964-RC1 -
RC2: 'Comment on egusphere-2025-1964', Anonymous Referee #2, 11 Sep 2025
Comments on Summertime evaporation over two lakes in the Schirmacher oasis, East Antarctica by Shevnina et al.
In this study, evaporation was measured by the eddy-covariance technique during the austral summer two lakes in the Schirmacher oasis, East Antarctica. Both lakes are very small (only several hundred meters long and wide). The break-up durations of both lakes are short (only 1-2 month). So they are quite different from lakes in other areas of the world. Meanwhile, eddy-covariance (EC) technique is still rarely used in Antarctica. Therefore, it is an interesting study and worthy to be published in HESS. However, a major revision is still needed before publication. Some comments are shown below:
1, Result section is still unclear for me and should be reorganized. I am still unclear whether the measuring time span the whole ice-free period of the two lakes. The author should also show the result of both lakes one by one, so the readers can be easy to follow.
2, Section 3.1, the authors should clarify whether it is the whole ice-free period or not for both lakes. If the EC system was only operated only part of the ice-free period, the authors should also clarify. For example, Figure 5 shows that the lake was still ice-free on Feb 25, 2020, but the evaporation result only covers the period from 7 December 2019 to 8 January 2020 (Line 183). The authors should give clarify this in the revision.
3, Line 101-103, lake water temperature should be addressed in the next paragraph. Please reorganize this section and the following.
4, Section 4.2, The EC system was operated at both lakes. Evaporation over Lake Glubokoe was addressed, but the result of Lake Zub is not mentioned, why?
5, Figure 1, it is difficult to read. I can not find where are year round (red) and seasonal (blue) settlements from the Figure.
6, Figure 4, what do the vertical dashed lines mean? The start and end of ice should be marked in the Figure
7, Figure 5, The middle picture is taken from a different site compared with the other two.
Citation: https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2025-1964-RC2 -
RC3: 'Comment on egusphere-2025-1964', Anonymous Referee #3, 14 Sep 2025
The manuscript investigated summertime evaporation over two Antarctic lakes and is worthy in polar and hydrometeorology science. The observation data are valuable and the research methods are reliable, but the organization of the manuscript is not very coherent in logical. The narrative is relatively redundant. In particular, the discussion and conclusion sections contain too many contents that are repetitive with the previous text. The manuscript needs substantial revision:
- Listing the four combination formula simply may improve understanding of the precision of the used 6 methods.
- In Section 3.1, it may be better to introduce all of the information one lake by one lake.
- The origin of the wind-dependent transfer coefficient (Eqs. 2-3, Fig. 10) is unclear. This is a critical part of the analysis and must be explicitly stated: are these relationships developed from the Zub 2017-2018 data in this manuscript, or are they presented as established relationships from a previous study? This has major implications for interpreting the validation results in Table 3 and Fig. 11.
- If the CEin equation (2) and (3) were obtained in the previous work (Shevnina et al., 2022), it may appear in Section 3.2 Methods. Table 2 may be moved to the section, too.
- Is Figure 10 from the above mentioned previous work? If not, how to get it?
- The performance of the wind-dependent method needs explanation. If it was derived from Zub data, why does it not perform best for Zub? Why does the best parameterization differ between the two lakes? This warrants discussion on the site-specificity of these coefficients.
- Figures: Most of subfigures and legends are unclear. It is recommended that each subfigure of a figure be labeled as a, b, c, d, etc., instead of distinguishing subfigures by terms like "Figure 2 top" or "Figure 2 bottom". Additionally, each piece of information in the figures should be explained in the legends.
- 1: The format of the numbering is inconsistent with that of other figures (e.g., Figure 2). It is suggested to unify the figure numbering format, such as using "Figure 1" consistently with "Figure 2".
- Section 4.1: The descriptions in the text do not correspond to the figures, leading to confusion. It is suggested that the authors carefully check and revise this part.
- Figure 3: I only observed black and green colors in the upper subfigure. Where does "water vapour concentration (blue)" in the legend come from? Does "relative humidity" correspond to green or black? Are the data in the figure daily data or half-hourly data? I assume they are half-hourly data, which would contradict the description in L152 that the range of daily air temperature is -4.9 to 5.1 ℃.
- L196-203: This section is analyzed based on Figure 7, yet there is no reference to Figure 7 at all. It is suggested that the authors add "(Fig. 7a)" and other corresponding references at appropriate places in the text.
Citation: https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2025-1964-RC3
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