Articles | Volume 21, issue 5
https://doi.org/10.5194/os-21-2605-2025
© Author(s) 2025. This work is distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
Thwaites Eastern Ice Shelf cavity observations reveal multiyear sea ice dynamics and deepwater warming in Pine Island Bay, West Antarctica
Download
- Final revised paper (published on 28 Oct 2025)
- Supplement to the final revised paper
- Preprint (discussion started on 15 Apr 2025)
- Supplement to the preprint
Interactive discussion
Status: closed
Comment types: AC – author | RC – referee | CC – community | EC – editor | CEC – chief editor
| : Report abuse
-
RC1: 'Comment on egusphere-2025-1675', Anonymous Referee #1, 02 May 2025
- AC1: 'Reply on RC1', Christian Wild, 11 Jul 2025
-
RC2: 'Comment on egusphere-2025-1675', Anonymous Referee #2, 15 May 2025
- AC2: 'Reply on RC2', Christian Wild, 11 Jul 2025
Peer review completion
AR: Author's response | RR: Referee report | ED: Editor decision | EF: Editorial file upload
AR by Christian Wild on behalf of the Authors (01 Aug 2025)
Author's response
Author's tracked changes
Manuscript
ED: Publish subject to technical corrections (02 Aug 2025) by Julian Mak
AR by Christian Wild on behalf of the Authors (08 Aug 2025)
Manuscript
This manuscript presents ice shelf cavity observations in Pine Island Bay. The value of these observations is indisputable, and they deserve to be published as proposed in this manuscript. I do not have any major criticism. If any, I wish the presentation should be improved to better highlight the novelty of the results, and to provide a slightly improved description of methodologies.
Novelty: Reading the abstract only, I find it hard to appreciate what makes this study novel and unique. Could this be restated and improved?
The map in Fig. 1 was so little that I found it hard to read. The choice of colors could also be improved.
DTS thermal profiling: I could not find a definition of the acronym DTS before l. 144. It would be nice to find information about the accuracy of these measurements. Is there a way to assess the potential for temporal drifts?
Cross-wavelet analysis: I found the amount of information available on this method insufficient. What is the unit of the quantity derived from the cross-wavelet transform? How to interpret the result? More generally, would it not be useful to see a wavelet transform of the temperature signal alone? Also, the correlation between temperature and salinity implies some level of density compensation. Would it be possible to analyse the density variations directly? It is partially done in Fig. 6 but it could be better highlighted.
l. 390: I do not understand the statement that warming leads to thermal expansion of the water column. The direct effect of thermal expansion on the position of an isopycnal would be at a centimetric scale at best, especially in such a cold region. This is not something I expect can be directly observed. Can you clarify?
Fig. 8: I find it very hard to understand what the x-axis corresponds to and how to read this figure. More details would help.