Evolution of events before and after the 17 June 2017 rock avalanche at Karrat Fjord, West Greenland – a multidisciplinary approach to detecting and locating unstable rock slopes in a remote Arctic area

Svennevig, Kristian; Dahl-Jensen, Trine; Keiding, Marie; Merryman Boncori, John Peter; Larsen, Tine B.; Salehi, Sara; Munck Solgaard, Anne; Voss, Peter H.

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/esurf-8-1021-2020

Articles | Volume 8, issue 4

https://doi.org/10.5194/esurf-8-1021-2020

© Author(s) 2020. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/esurf-8-1021-2020

© Author(s) 2020. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 8, issue 4

Research article

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08 Dec 2020

Research article | Highlight paper |

| 08 Dec 2020

Evolution of events before and after the 17 June 2017 rock avalanche at Karrat Fjord, West Greenland – a multidisciplinary approach to detecting and locating unstable rock slopes in a remote Arctic area

Kristian Svennevig, Trine Dahl-Jensen, Marie Keiding, John Peter Merryman Boncori, Tine B. Larsen, Sara Salehi, Anne Munck Solgaard, and Peter H. Voss

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Final revised paper (published on 08 Dec 2020)
Preprint (discussion started on 11 May 2020)

Interactive discussion

Status: closed

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

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RC1: 'Review letter', Anonymous Referee #1, 12 May 2020
- AC1: 'Short answer to R#1', Kristian Svennevig, 12 May 2020
- AC2: 'Answer to reviewer 1', Kristian Svennevig, 24 Sep 2020
RC2: 'Evolution of events before and after the 17 June 2017 landslide at Karrat, West Greenland – a multidisciplinary approach for studying landslides in a remote arctic area', Anonymous Referee #2, 08 Jun 2020
- SC1: 'Short answer to reviewer', Kristian Svennevig, 09 Jun 2020
- AC3: 'Answer to reviewer 2', Kristian Svennevig, 24 Sep 2020
RC3: 'Review', Anonymous Referee #3, 16 Jun 2020
- SC2: 'Short answer to reviewer', Kristian Svennevig, 17 Jun 2020
- AC4: 'Answer to reviewer 3', Kristian Svennevig, 24 Sep 2020
RC4: 'Review 2', Anonymous Referee #4, 19 Jun 2020
- SC3: 'Short answer to reviewer', Kristian Svennevig, 21 Jun 2020
- AC5: 'Answer to reviewer 4', Kristian Svennevig, 24 Sep 2020

Peer-review completion

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

AR by Kristian Svennevig on behalf of the Authors (24 Sep 2020) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Publish as is (23 Oct 2020) by Michael Krautblatter

Dear Dr. Svennevig and coauthors,

I have carefully checked the revised version of the paper. (i) Major parts of the abstract have been rewritten and are now much more focussed. (ii) The Introduction has been thoroughly revised and now better refers to previous work done on the sequence of rock slope failures in Karrat and resembling studies. (iii) The terminology in the paper has been homogenized and improved. (iv) Referencing of figures is now consistently implemented. (v) Shortcomings in the descriptions of the methods especially with respect to DInSAR and seismology have been improved. (vi) The presentation of results is now better structured and presented especially in the sections dealing with previous activity and non-tectonic seismicity. (vii) The discussion now includes a section on potential preparatory and preconditioning factors and also highlights the chronological preparation of events, supported by a revised Table 2. (viii) The conclusion has been rewritten as is now more a real conclusion of the comprehensive set of results provided in the paper. (ix) Figure captions and figures/tables haven been updated in response to reviewer suggestions. Due to its multidisciplinary approach this paper contributes to a better understanding of repeated massive rock slope failure activity, potential preconditioning factors and methods suited to decipher unstable rock slopes in remote areas. I think this is quite an interesting contribution to the community and fosters the understanding of progressive rock slope failure activity.
This paper has significantly improved from carefully implementing reviewer comments, major parts of the paper have been restructured and rephrased and I now recommend to publish the paper in it present version.

All the best, Michael Krautblatter

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ED: Publish as is (29 Oct 2020) by Andreas Lang (Editor)

AR by Kristian Svennevig on behalf of the Authors (29 Oct 2020)

Short summary

The 17 June 2017 Karrat landslide in Greenland caused a tsunami that killed four people. We apply a multidisciplinary workflow to reconstruct a timeline of events and find that three historic landslides occurred in 2009, 2016, and 2017. We also find evidence of much older periods of landslide activity. Three newly discovered active slopes might pose a future hazard. We speculate that the trigger for the recent events is melting permafrost due to a warming climate.