Representation of dissolved organic carbon in the JULES land surface model (vn4.4_JULES-DOCM)

Nakhavali, Mahdi; Friedlingstein, Pierre; Lauerwald, Ronny; Tang, Jing; Chadburn, Sarah; Camino-Serrano, Marta; Guenet, Bertrand; Harper, Anna; Walmsley, David; Peichl, Matthias; Gielen, Bert

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-11-593-2018

Articles | Volume 11, issue 2

https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-11-593-2018

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

https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-11-593-2018

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

Articles | Volume 11, issue 2

Model description paper

|

12 Feb 2018

Model description paper |

| 12 Feb 2018

Representation of dissolved organic carbon in the JULES land surface model (vn4.4_JULES-DOCM)

Mahdi Nakhavali, Pierre Friedlingstein, Ronny Lauerwald, Jing Tang, Sarah Chadburn, Marta Camino-Serrano, Bertrand Guenet, Anna Harper, David Walmsley, Matthias Peichl, and Bert Gielen

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Final revised paper (published on 12 Feb 2018)
Supplement to the final revised paper
Preprint (discussion started on 24 Jul 2017)
Supplement to the preprint

Interactive discussion

Status: closed

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

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RC1: 'Referee comments', Anonymous Referee #1, 16 Sep 2017
- AC1: 'Reviewer #1 answers', Mahdi Nakhavali, 31 Oct 2017
RC2: 'Referee comments', Anonymous Referee #2, 10 Oct 2017
- AC2: 'Reviewer #2 answers', Mahdi Nakhavali, 31 Oct 2017

Peer-review completion

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

AR by Mahdi (Andre) Nakhavali on behalf of the Authors (31 Oct 2017) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Referee Nomination & Report Request started (10 Nov 2017) by Christoph Müller

RR by Anonymous Referee #2 (25 Nov 2017)

Suggestions for revision or reasons for rejection

First of all, I am happy with the all changes that are made after the first revision. It improved the article! However I still have some remarks.

First I don’t understand the reaction of the authors on reviewer #2:
“Page 10, line 8: Remark. The method of changing one parameter at the time. This is a popular method. However, it renders no information on the effects of interactions of the parameters and that it covers only a limited part of the entire parameter space.

We agree with reviewer #2 that there could be some interactions between sensitivity of different parameters, but testing this was beyond the scope of this study.”

My question is: why is performing a good sensitivity analyses beyond the scope of this study? This is a weak reply of the authors on this remark.

My second remark is on the following reaction:
“Page 10, line 8: Why 50%? 10 or 5% was also enough to say something about the sensitivity around the default values.
Since the derived model parameters from literature already had their own level of uncertainty, for instance CUE which has more than 50% or K DOC with 5-40% of uncertainty, we took the 50% of change to test all the parameters at the reasonable degree.”

Firstly I got the impression that the authors are a little bit confused. An uncertainty range is not needed to perform a sensitivity analyses. To avoid effects of a possible non-linear behaviour of the model, a small range is in general better. Besides this, the authors claim that they took 50% change for all parameters. However table S4 says something different. Also table 1 says something different. For example parameter D_f has a change of 33%. This table (and also table 2) has also a unit of Kg, which was one of the remarks of reviewer #1.

Other remarks:
Figure 6: Unit Kg is used.
Figure 8: This is a representation of information that is given in table S4 and S5. I don’t understand this information. Table S4 gives 16 results. I think that set-1 is used to calculate the ‘relative change’ (how defined?). The second set has a global beta_z, but that is not in the figure 8, nor in table S5. But why not change z_0 into two directions? I don’t know. Why is z_0 for Carlow coloured red and having a positive relative change? Please make this information consistent with each other.
Table S1 and S2: Z_0 in stead of z_0.
Figure S3: Unit Kg is used. Which depth is the DOC concentration?
Figure S4: “-” sign is missing in the unit on the y axis
pag 5 supplement: references to figure S4 and S5 are wrong. On pag 7 the references to tables are wrong. Please check all the references to tables and figures!
Figure S5: “-” sign is missing in the unit on the y-axis and x-axis.
Figure S6: C is missing in the unit on the y-axis.
Is the reference at the end still needed?

My advise is that the authors should go through the manuscript to fix the problems and to make the supplementary material consistent with the main text.

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RR by Anonymous Referee #1 (19 Dec 2017)

ED: Publish subject to technical corrections (03 Jan 2018) by Christoph Müller

AR by Mahdi (Andre) Nakhavali on behalf of the Authors (09 Jan 2018) Author's response Manuscript

Short summary

In order to provide a better understanding of the Earth's carbon cycle, we need a model that represents the whole continuum from atmosphere to land and into the ocean. In this study we include in JULES a representation of dissolved organic carbon (DOC) processes. Our results show that the model is able to reproduce the DOC concentration and controlling processes, including leaching to the riverine system, which is fundamental for integrating the terrestrial and aquatic ecosystem.