Prevailing climatic trends and runoff response from Hindukush–Karakoram–Himalaya, upper Indus Basin

Hasson, Shabeh; Böhner, Jürgen; Lucarini, Valerio

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-8-337-2017

Articles | Volume 8, issue 2

https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-8-337-2017

© Author(s) 2017. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.

Special issue:

Climate Change and Environmental Pressure: Adaptation and...

https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-8-337-2017

© Author(s) 2017. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.

Articles | Volume 8, issue 2

Research article

|

17 May 2017

Research article |

| 17 May 2017

Prevailing climatic trends and runoff response from Hindukush–Karakoram–Himalaya, upper Indus Basin

Shabeh Hasson, Jürgen Böhner, and Valerio Lucarini

Download

Final revised paper (published on 17 May 2017)
Preprint (discussion started on 23 Mar 2015)

Interactive discussion

Status: closed

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

- Printer-friendly version

- Supplement

RC C420: 'Review of ESD-2015-12', Anonymous Referee #1, 09 Jul 2015
RC C437: 'Prevailing climatic trends and runoff response from Hindukush – Karakoram – Himalaya, upper Indus Basin', Anonymous Referee #2, 14 Jul 2015
- AC C893: 'Response to the Anonymous Reviewer # 2', Shabeh ul Hasson, 30 Nov 2015
AC C892: 'Response to the Anonymous Reviewer # 1', Shabeh ul Hasson, 30 Nov 2015
EC C1340: 'A third review (anonymous)', Axel Kleidon, 19 Dec 2016

Peer-review completion

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

AR by Shabehul Hasson on behalf of the Authors (28 Dec 2015) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Referee Nomination & Report Request started (07 Jun 2016) by Axel Kleidon

RR by Bodo Bookhagen (27 Oct 2016)

Suggestions for revision or reasons for rejection

Review of “Prevailing climatic trends and runoff response from Hindukush-Karakoram-Hiamalaya, upper Indus basin” by Hasson et al.
This manuscript describe the climatic constraints on water availability of the upper Indus Basin in Pakistan. The authors rely on station data (temperature and precipitation and discharge) which are sparse in this region. The authors make important observations on climate trends and decompose them by season/months. The authors address the topic of the Karakoram Anomaly - this is a timely topic in a region that receives lots of attention, but is characterized by a lack of ground and station data. The authors attempt to fill that niche – although this manuscript is not a presentation of a lot of new station data, it is a very useful overview and synthesis.

Overall, the manuscript is well written, but is certainly on the lengthy and wordy side. In that respect, does the methods section really need the statistical basis of the MK/TS/etc explained with formulas? This seems like a lot of additional material and weight that is not necessary. In short, while the authors are thourough and the manuscript contains important information, it is too long. For example, the results start at line 512 – this is the length of some other entire manuscript. While informative and important, the results of the discharge data alone are 1.5 pages (>40 lines).

Some minor suggestions and wording comments:
I'm also not convinced that the section on trends vs lat/lon is helpful. There should be a lot more local topography impact than pure lat/lon impact (e.g. aspect, distance from mountain front as proxy for rain shadow, distance to local peaks). So, an analysis of trends vs elevation/relief/aspect would be more instructive. Given the length of the manuscript and the focus (and the extensive trend analysis), I suggest to remove this part, because it doesn’t provide the detail and thoroughness as other parts of the manuscript.

L835 they suggest a weakening of the westerlies, which disagrees with other interpretation and literature, and then on the next page suggest an increase in the strength of westerly storms (citing Cannon et al.). This seems inconsistent – please rephrase.

Figure 1: Station locations are difficult to see. I suggest to use a grayscale image for elevation or other symbols. Almost impossible to identify glaciers.

Table 4, 6, and others: I always tend to use one significance level and use ONLY that significance level. Using two significance levels (0.9 vs 0.95) is misleading. Most importantly, that add clutter and noise to the table that is unnecessary.

I am struggling with the last 3 figures (Figure 9-11). While these are useful in terms of data-generation and visualization effort, they do not convey any useful information – unless you are willingly to stare at least 5 minutes at one figure. Grid lines would be helpful, but also an indication what information these figures should convey. As pointed out before, the manuscript would not be weaker, if these are removed. Especially considering the facts that there are a dozen stations over 5 degree of longitude (550 km) in some of the roughest terrain on earth!
IF the authors decide to leave them in, I strongly urge them to revisit them, make colors and symbols clearer and indicate what these are supposed to document (trends)? Otherwise the reader will interpret them as that there is not climatic relation with topography.

Bodo Bookhagen

Hide

RR by Anonymous Referee #4 (02 Dec 2016)

Suggestions for revision or reasons for rejection

Comments for manuscript: ESD-2015-12

Summary

The manuscript has done comprehensive assessment of prevailing trends for relevant hydro-climatic variables in the upper Indus basin (UIB). Relations among hydro-climate, monsoon, westerly disturbances and water availability in this high-altitude mountain basin were reasonably discussed. Overall, this is a well written manuscript and the results are interesting.

I only have two main concerns for this study:

(1) 18-year data series look too short to do trend analysis;

(2) the interactions between atmosphere and the mountainous hydrological processes in UIB could be better interpreted if a land surface model/atmosphere-land coupled model is being used other than intensively relying on statistics. That would be more helpful in understanding the underlying processes.

Hence my recommendation is to be published after revision.

Minor comments:
(1) Figure 1-2, I suggest unify the formats of figure 1 and figure 2. For example, the use of North Arrow, Scale bar, ranges of latitude and longitude, font size, markers for the same theme such as Discharge Stations and Rivers, should be unified in these figures. The ticks should be displayed either inside (or outside) of the dataframe. I also suggest not show the major division ticks for axes which have not been labeled, e.g., the left and bottom axes in the dataframe.

(2) Figure 9-10, missing the “37.0” in y-label for DTR. Try to unify the scale of y-axis in Figure 9 and Figure 10. Even in Figure 10, the y-labels are the same for all subplot, but the scales are a little bit different, e.g., the subplot for DTR.

(3) Figure 9-11, the units of trends should be oC/yr or mm/yr, please specify them in these figures.

Hide

ED: Reconsider after major revisions (19 Dec 2016) by Axel Kleidon

AR by Shabehul Hasson on behalf of the Authors (11 Mar 2017) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Referee Nomination & Report Request started (23 Mar 2017) by Axel Kleidon

ED: Publish subject to technical corrections (08 Apr 2017) by Axel Kleidon

AR by Shabehul Hasson on behalf of the Authors (11 Apr 2017) Author's response Manuscript

Short summary

A first comprehensive and systematic hydroclimatic trend analysis for the upper Indus Basin suggests warming and drying of spring and rising early melt-season discharge over 1995–2012 period. In contrast, cooling and falling or weakly rising discharge is found within summer monsoon period that coincides well with main glacier melt season. Such seasonally distinct changes, indicating dominance of snow but suppression of glacial melt regime, address hydroclimatic explanation of Karakoram Anomaly.