Estimates of late Cenozoic climate change relevant to Earth surface processes in tectonically active orogens

Mutz, Sebastian G.; Ehlers, Todd A.; Werner, Martin; Lohmann, Gerrit; Stepanek, Christian; Li, Jingmin

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/esurf-6-271-2018

Articles | Volume 6, issue 2

https://doi.org/10.5194/esurf-6-271-2018

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

Special issue:

Earth surface shaping by biota (ESurf/BG/ESD/ESSD/SOIL inter-journal...

https://doi.org/10.5194/esurf-6-271-2018

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

Articles | Volume 6, issue 2

Research article

|

06 Apr 2018

Research article |

| 06 Apr 2018

Estimates of late Cenozoic climate change relevant to Earth surface processes in tectonically active orogens

Sebastian G. Mutz, Todd A. Ehlers, Martin Werner, Gerrit Lohmann, Christian Stepanek, and Jingmin Li

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Final revised paper (published on 06 Apr 2018)
Supplement to the final revised paper
Preprint (discussion started on 16 Aug 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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- Supplement

RC1: 'Review of esurf-2017-47', Andrew Wickert, 23 Sep 2017
- AC1: 'Response to RC1', Sebastian Mutz, 14 Jan 2018
RC2: 'Review of Mutz et al.', Anonymous Referee #2, 14 Nov 2017
- AC2: 'Response to RC2', Sebastian Mutz, 14 Jan 2018
EC1: 'Associate editor comment', David Lundbek Egholm, 17 Nov 2017

Peer-review completion

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

AR by Sebastian G. Mutz on behalf of the Authors (15 Jan 2018) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Referee Nomination & Report Request started (28 Jan 2018) by David Lundbek Egholm

RR by Andrew Wickert (19 Feb 2018)

Suggestions for revision or reasons for rejection

The revised manuscript by Mutz et al. is a clear improvement over its predecessor, but does not sufficiently address substantial comments that I made on the last version of the manuscript. I have given more thought to specific suggestions on how to rectify this. Some of these issues are major, and I have therefore suggested "Major Revisions", though I believe that Mutz et al. may be able to complete them in short order. I will, therefore, also keep this short and to the point. Once these major issues are resolved, I will be happy to review the revised manuscript thoroughly.

The primary items of concern are:
1. A title that is not representative of the article content
2. A lack of clarity from the abstract and introduction on what the authors actually do.

In short, the authors must communicate up-front something along the lines of:
"Motivated by the need to better understand climate impacts on the denudation of orogens, we model paleoclimate at 4 time slices, and qualitatively compare how changes in temperature and precipitation may impact fluvial and/or hillslope erosion."

Title:
"Where is Late Cenozoic climate change most likely to impact denudation?"

The authors do not answer this question. There are two issues to address here. The former can be addressed in the text. The latter will require a change in scope or title.
1. The text does not answer this question in regards to fluvial and hillslope erosion. The discussion provides some ideas on how changes in P and T may impact erosion rates in different regions, but offer no concrete proposals or answers.
2. The authors state that glacial erosion is beyond the scope of their study. There is no way to discuss late Cenozoic erosion (let alone climate change and erosion) without considering glacial erosion.

I would suggest a title that relates more closely to the authors' work, as a modeling study intended to provide environmental conditions that may impact fluvial and/or hillslope erosion. Such a title will be less broad in scope, but may be more powerful in precision.

Abstract:
1. Do you discuss vegetation gradients in the results of your work? In other words, is it worth including here?
Otherwise, the abstract is clear.

Introduction:
It is not clear in the introduction how you will link your model results to landscape evolution. Making clear the focus on the model and its inspiration (landscape evolution), along with the limited scope of the actual application to landscape evolution you provide here, will help the readers see the paper for what it is.

One specific point: you mention glacial erosion in the introduction as being important, but then note in line 434 that you will not address it. Up until this point, the reader may reasonably think that you are going to discuss glacial erosion, as it is a dominant process in the late Cenozoic.

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ED: Publish subject to minor revisions (review by editor) (20 Feb 2018) by David Lundbek Egholm

AR by Sebastian G. Mutz on behalf of the Authors (02 Mar 2018) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Publish as is (08 Mar 2018) by David Lundbek Egholm

ED: Publish as is (09 Mar 2018) by Andreas Lang (Editor)

AR by Sebastian G. Mutz on behalf of the Authors (12 Mar 2018) Author's response Manuscript

Short summary

We use a climate model and statistics to provide an overview of regional climates from different times in the late Cenozoic. We focus on tectonically active mountain ranges in particular. Our results highlight significant changes in climates throughout the late Cenozoic, which should be taken into consideration when interpreting erosion rates. We also document the differences between model- and proxy-based estimates for late Cenozoic climate change in South America and Tibet.