The Thermal Imbalances Recorded at the NE Rift during the 2012 Explosive Activity at the South East Cone (Mt. Etna, Italy)
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
This text entitled: The Thermal Imbalances Recorded at the NE Rift During the 2012 Explosive Activity at the South East Cone (mt. Etna, Italy)
I find it very interesting as it presents an important problem of prediction of volcanic extrusions.
However, I miss the error account and the statistical correlation coefficient of the presented results. Yes, the graphs and tables show changes in ground temperature that seem to be related to eruptions, but a thorough statistical analysis with visualization of the results of these studies would be very beneficial to support these data.
The whole text in my opinion is written correctly, I also agree with the arguments submitted by the authors, I just ask to consider supplementing the data with statistical analysis.
Author Response
Dear anonymous reviewer, thank you for your positive feedback and for your suggestion.
I agree that a thorough statistical analysis would better support this long-term monitoring.
In Diliberto et al. 2012 (based on the same original monitoring data) and I described the data validation method used to exclude the poor quality temperature data from data elaboration (diffuse heat flux and depth limit of the convective front), visual representation (binary graphs) and relative discussion.
I upload here my complete reply letter with a couple of figures, as a pdf file.
Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
Excellent paper :)
After analyzing the paper in Figure 2, for the next article, I propose to look for the relationship between the frequency of volcanic eruptions and earthquakes with the radiation of the sun mentioned here, but not in the infrared but with energy streams.
By this I mean the Coronal Mass Ejections and Solar Flares. As we know, when they reach the ground, they disturb the magnetic field. But the same magnetic field makes the earth's core work.
Thus, it is appropriate to examine whether, for example, there is less solar activity, more or fewer earthquakes, and volcanic eruptions. And when there is an increase in the activity of the sun, the number of such events increases.
Author Response
Dear second reviewer,
Thank you for your positive feedback and for your suggestion.
I would be happy to share all the ground temperature data I am collecting, for new comparisons and considerations, with other researchers. Actually, I am involved in situ monitoring data acquisition and thus my applications are still constrained to small locations and direct measurements (for example heat and CO2 diffuse flux from the ground). However, I agree with you that the possible effects of energy streams of the solar radiation on the frequencies of volcanic and seismic activity could be seriously considered, among the other variables of possible influences, for a comparative approach of suited time-series of data. I would like to join a research group to start many different approaches to the common questions, based on our observation network, switching also among very different scales of space and time.
Yours sincerely,
Serena
Reviewer 3 Report
Dear authors
this manuscript presents a novel methodology which could be easily implemented in several volcanic observatories and/or research groups. It have a high potential to be correlated with others techniques, and with some improvements in real time. The manuscript is well written, is very simple and easy to follow during the reading. I have only minor comments which were indicated as annotations in the pdf file.
kind regards
Dr. Felipe Aguilera
Comments for author File: Comments.pdf
Author Response
Dear Dr. Aguilera, many thanks for your positive feedback,
I uploaded again all the requested pdf files with my replies to Rev 3
Iole Serena Diliberto
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
