Glacier Changes in the Qilian Mountains, Northwest China, between the 1960s and 2015
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
This is an interesting manuscript on glacier changes in the Qilian Mountains, Northwest China, from the 1960s to 2015. In the light of recent global warming and glacier melting, the results from this study is highly relevant and of high significance. The quality of the presentation is generally good, but he letters and numbers in the figures are a bit blurred, so please increase resolution in the printed/online version. The applied methods seem appropriate for this study. The conclusions are supported by the data presented and the paper should be of regional and global interest.
The English seems fine, although I am not a native English speaker.
Author Response
The resolution of all the figures have been adjusted to 600 dpi to make the letters and numbers clear.
Reviewer 2 Report
The use of aerial and remote sensing imagery for tracking change in alpine glacier coverage is a vital assessment of climate change effects. In this case the authors track the shrinkage of glaciers in the Qilian Mountains of China that are an important source of freshwater.
My one criticism of this paper is that it only extends the previous study of Sun et al. (2018) ( CGI-2 or SCGI) by a few years though addition of 2013-2016 data. The overall assessment of area decrease (20.9%) is very similar to previous assessments. The authors need to distinguish these updated results as a truly new contribution. It is possible this paper presents novel interpretation of the data not presented in the first paper, but make that clear.
There are several minor edits needed in the abstract
line 12 Qilian Mountains are sources of fresh-water important for sustainable development
line 19 In comparison to previous inventories, glacial area was found to shrink
line 23 In addition instead of Moreover, spatial pattern instead of difference
line 24 rate was large in the east and small in the west
With a decrease in glacier area of 20% over the past 50 years, what does this suggest for future availability for this arid region?
Author Response
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Author Response File: 
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Reviewer 3 Report
Please see the attachment
Comments for author File: Comments.pdf
Author Response
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Reviewer 4 Report
1. What is the basic difference in the methodological approach in Sun et al (2018) and this study. All the objectives set out in this study have already been addressed by previous researches. Please discuss the approach and methodological framework of this study in detail to show the essence of present paper .
2. Full forms of many abbreviations are required such as CGI-I, CGI-II, SCGI, FCGI etc.
3. English grammar check is needed.
Author Response
We have added a PDF file of all responses.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
