the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
| 06 Aug 2025
Brief communication: Estimating Antarctic surface melt rates using passive microwave data calibrated with weather station observations
Abstract. We present a dataset of Antarctic annual surface melt rates (6.25 km resolution, 2012–2021) from 19 GHz Special Sensor Microwave Imager/Sounder (SSMIS). First, melt occurrence is detected via thresholds for brightness temperature, diurnal variation, and winter anomaly, calibrated with Automatic Weather Station (AWS) data. Second, AWS-driven surface energy balance modeling yields an empirical relation between annual melt days and water-equivalent melt volume. SSMIS-derived melt volumes show good agreement with AWS-based melt estimates (R2 = 0.83). Compared to QuikSCAT and RACMO2.4 outputs, SSMIS captures a similar spatial melt pattern but estimates a total melt volume approximately 15 % lower than RACMO, on the decadal average.
Competing interests: B.W. and M.vdB. are members of the editorial board of journal The Cryosphere.
Publisher's note: Copernicus Publications remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims made in the text, published maps, institutional affiliations, or any other geographical representation in this paper. While Copernicus Publications makes every effort to include appropriate place names, the final responsibility lies with the authors. Views expressed in the text are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher.- Preprint
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Status: final response (author comments only)
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RC1: 'Comment on egusphere-2025-2900', Anonymous Referee #1, 22 Sep 2025
The comment was uploaded in the form of a supplement: https://egusphere.copernicus.org/preprints/2025/egusphere-2025-2900/egusphere-2025-2900-RC1-supplement.pdfCitation: https://doi.org/
10.5194/egusphere-2025-2900-RC1 -
AC1: 'Reply on RC1', Valeria Di Biase, 06 Nov 2025
Author Comment to Referee #1
We thank Referee #1 for their very detailed and insightful review. We appreciate the time and care taken in evaluating our manuscript and for the constructive suggestions that will help us improve both clarity and scientific depth. We are pleased that the reviewer found the paper to be well structured and methodologically sound.
General statement
We acknowledge the reviewer’s valuable recommendation to expand the introduction to provide broader context, more recent literature, and a stronger emphasis on the physical background and relevance of our study. We agree that these additions would improve the manuscript.
However, the current work was submitted as a Brief Communication, which limits both word count and number of references. Our concise approach was therefore guided by the format requirements.
Should the editor consider it appropriate, we would be pleased to convert this Brief Communication into a Full Paper, without altering the core scientific content, so as to integrate the reviewer’s suggestions in full.Specific points
- Introduction and references: We will include additional recent citations. and explicitly discuss the connection between firn air depletion, surface melt, and hydrofracture. A brief overview of the surface energy balance and its role in driving melt will also be added, as suggested.
- Methodology (Section 3.1): We will revise the terminology to clarify the purpose of the analysis and specify how the UMelt grids were chosen. The rationale for the 11×11 km2 grid will be provided.
- ROC analysis: We will correct the identification of the best-performing metric (winter anomaly instead of diurnal amplitude), and adjust accordingly.
- Consistency and clarity: We will standardize all dataset names, remove redundancies, and clarify thresholds for defining melt days. Acronyms will be introduced once and used consistently.
- Figures and results: We will add a supplementary figure showing the AWS locations, clarify which melt rates are annual vs. decadal, and improve figure captions..
- Discussion: We will refine the text to make the interpretation more confident where the data support it, and clarify the physical implications of SSMIS sensitivity to subsurface melt.
Concluding remark
We are grateful for the reviewer’s detailed feedback, which will significantly enhance the clarity and completeness of the revised manuscript. Many of the proposed textual and figure improvements will be implemented directly, and broader contextual and bibliographic extensions will be developed in the present manuscript, either keeping it as Brief Communication, or converted as a Full Paper.
On behalf of all co-authors,
Valeria Di BiaseCitation: https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2025-2900-AC1
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AC1: 'Reply on RC1', Valeria Di Biase, 06 Nov 2025
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RC2: 'Comment on egusphere-2025-2900', Anonymous Referee #2, 24 Sep 2025
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AC2: 'Reply on RC2', Valeria Di Biase, 06 Nov 2025
Author Comment to Referee #2
We thank Referee #2 for their thoughtful and positive review. We appreciate the recognition of the methodological soundness and the potential value of our dataset for Antarctic melt studies and model validation.
General statement
We agree with the reviewer’s comments highlighting the need for a clearer discussion of spatial representativeness and for additional figures to improve visualization of key regions.
We also note the reviewer’s observation that the introduction could be expanded to better situate our contribution within the broader literature. As this work was submitted as a Brief Communication, we were constrained by limits on text length and references.
If the editor considers it appropriate, we would be happy to convert the manuscript to a Full Paper, enabling us to expand the introduction, discussion, and reference list accordingly.Specific points
- Geographical representativeness: We agree that the calibration dataset, while limited in spatial coverage, could introduce regional uncertainties. In the revised version, we will explicitly discuss this limitation.
- Visualization of Antarctic Peninsula: We will include a supplementary figure (or an inset in Figure 3) showing the Peninsula region at higher resolution to make the spatial structure of melt more readable.
- AWS location map: We will add a new map showing all AWS and Neumayer station locations to help orient readers who may not be familiar with their distribution.
- Minor textual edits: We will implement all suggested stylistic and clarity improvements.
Concluding remark
We appreciate the reviewer’s encouraging assessment and constructive comments. We are confident that the proposed revisions will improve readability and scientific transparency.
If the editor advises, we are prepared, if necessary, to expand it into a Full Paper to more fully address the reviewer’s suggestions.On behalf of all co-authors,
Valeria Di Biase
Citation: https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2025-2900-AC2
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AC2: 'Reply on RC2', Valeria Di Biase, 06 Nov 2025
Data sets
Annual Antarctic Surface Melt Maps (2011–12 to 2020–21) from SSMIS 19 GHz V. Di Biase https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.16738423
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