The Temperature of Halite Crystallization in the Badenian Saline Basins, in the Context of Paleoclimate Reconstruction of the Carpathian Area

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

I really enjoyed reading this manuscript!

 

Line 19-20

• Term ‘cooled near-surface brines’ sounds like the brines cooled at the surface and are still at the surface. I think it would be clearer to the reader to call these something like surface-sourced, or surface-origin because my understanding is that these brines are cooling then sinking?
• 30m depth: I will discuss this in more detail below, but chevrons indicate shallow water, max 60cm according to Hanford (1990).

 

Line 42

• ‘the nearly complete destruction of biological ecosystems during salt deposition’ should be re-phrased. There were surely microbial extremophile ecosystems present during salt deposition. I think a better word would be ‘prohibited macrofaunal ecosystems during salt deposition’

 

Line 52

• Instead of various sections, say various cores and mine faces?

 

Starting with Line 55 (Geologic Setting)

• I appreciate the detailed geologic setting section of this manuscript. I think it would be helpful to the reader if in this section you also explicitly state the samples from each area. For example, on line 102 you mention Hrinivka; as the reader I assume this paragraph is then giving the background information for the samples from ‘The Hrynivka Salt Deposit. Borehole No. 525’. In the Geologic Setting section, you should state the name of the salt mine and/or core at the beginning of each paragraph so that the reader can easily understand which geologic setting information applies to which sample. Since I am unsure which samples come from which region, it makes it difficult to review the model presented in Fig. 5

 

Line 61, Figure 1

• Check colors in key. In the pdf I have, the same color is used in the key for Sea and Sulphates.

 

Line 150

• After reading the detailed Geologic Setting, I think it would be helpful to have a chronostratigraphic figure that shows the different regions/basins, the stratigraphic succession through time, any absolute ages known, and the location of any unconformities. This way, the reader can more easily understand the age relationships between the different areas, which again is key to interpreting Fig 5.

 

Line 152

• delete word ‘theory’

 

Line 202

• ponds? I thought these were marine/marginal marine. As written it is unclear that you are talking about observations in the modern here and not your Mid-Miocene depositional environments.

 

Line 205

• crushed? Did this occur during the Badenian? Then that would indicate burial, right? Could they have been partially dissolved instead?

 

Line 208

• I’m not sure what you mean by large inclusions found on the background of smaller ones.

 

Line 215-217

• Delete instruction text

 

Line 218-221

• Could these gas bubbles be trapped atmospheric air or biogenic gases created by extremophile microorganisms?

 

Line 230 Fig 2

• You show close-up of crystals, but without a picture that shows the context of the crystals within the matrix or with other crystals it is difficult to evaluate if these are indeed chevrons or cumulates. I’m guessing that most of the halite is clear and that there are remnants of these crystals remaining. If so, please state that and maybe show a picture with less magnification too.

 

Line 234

• It says here that you looked at 36 chevron and 2 cumulate crystals. In your Supplementary Info you label column 1 ‘No. Samples’ which is easily mistaken for ‘Number of Samples’. Please change the column heading to ‘Sample Number’ to prevent confusion.

 

Line 243

• You state that the spread of homogenization temperatures within different samples did not exceed 9 degrees C. It is unclear if that spread is within a single crystal or possibly a single fluid inclusion assemblage, or if you mean multiple crystals within a sample. In fact, you never once mention fluid inclusion assemblages, which form the foundation of fluid inclusion study (please see Goldstein, R.H., and Reynolds, T.J., 1994, Systematics of fluid inclusions in diagenetic minerals: Society of Economic Paleontologists and Mineralogists Short Course 31, 199 p.). You should mention if you used fluid inclusion assemblages in your methods and Supplementary materials, and if so, please add that information to the supplementary materials so the reader can see the spread of temperature data within a single fluid inclusion assemblage.

 

Line 265

• Is there a chance that there was dissolution as brine salinity probably fluctuated? Could this explain edges being levelled off?

 

Line 289-291

• You state that bottom halite formed from cooled saturated surface brine. You need to explicitly state that these are surface brines that cooled and then sank, which preceded precipitation of halite on the bottom.

 

Line 299-302

• I know you are in marine settings, but Benison’s work on chevrons from lakes may be appropriate here to cite when discussing daily temperature fluctuations. (Benison, K.C., and Goldstein, R.H., 1999, Permian paleoclimate data from fluid inclusions in halite: Chemical Geology, v. 154, p. 113–132, doi:10.1016/S0009-2541(98)00127-2.)

 

Line 302-303

• This sentence is completely out of place.

 

Line 312-314

• Perhaps you need to discuss here how Handford has a different interpretation for the depth of chevron crystals? See also my comments above for lines 19-20 and below for lines 325-329

 

Line 325-329

• I don’t agree with this analogy. While temperature is a function of water depth, it is also a function of weather/climate. The shallower the water, the more weather/climate will have an impact. This also completely ignores the observations of Handford regarding chevron water depth. Why can’t these waters be only 60cm deep? You need to describe petrographic evidence (or lack of, for example lack of desiccation features or efflorescent crusts) to make a convincing argument about water depth being up to 30m since that is central to your Fig 5 model. See Benison’s work for petrographic features of shallow water halite.

 

Line 358

• Remove ‘at the level’ and replace with an age-term since you are talking about age not stratigraphic position.

 

Supplementary Materials

• It is typical to report the size of the individual fluid inclusions so that it is clear that temperature is not size-dependent. Do you have this information? You should report it.
• It is typical to report the depths in the core from which the samples were taken. Otherwise, no one can reproduce this study.
• Each temperature value should have the following information associated with it: sample depth in core, which crystal within sample, fluid inclusion assemblage within crystal, and fluid inclusion size

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

Thank you for your review. We appreciate the recommendations and suggestions, and they were significant for the improvement of our research. We included specific responses to each issue in the enclosed pdf file (the reviewer's comments are in blue sentences, followed by our replies in black sentences).

Best regards

Krzysztof Bukowski

The corresponding author on behalf of the manuscript team.

 

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Note on the manuscript:

 

The manuscript entitled “The Temperature of Halite Crystallization in the Badenian  Saline Basins, in the Context of Paleoclimate Reconstruction of the Carpathian Area” written by Anatoliy R. Galamay , Krzysztof Bukowski , Igor M. Zinczuk  and Fanwei Meng  is short and well written dealing with  One of the most widespread salt formations formed in the Middle Miocene (Badenian) during the Badenian Salinity Crisis (B.S.C.) around 13.8 to 13.4 Ma.

 

 This paper presents the temperatures of homogenization in single-phase fluid inclusions contained in halite originating from various sections of salt basins in the Carpathian area. The results of study were used to construct model of saline sedimentation during the Badenian Salinity Crisis. Fluid inclusions in halite increasingly attract the researchers’ attention as a source of direct data and information on the halite crystallization temperature. Thus, the sample collections from different locations and samples taken from bottom and surface samples for analyses give very important results and some clues for temparatures and climate changes are ery important results of the manuscript as well as temperature variations of bottom and upper parts of the saline basins. They also compare their results with present Dead Sea. Their results presented refer to the crystallization temperatures of halite in the

Badenian saline basins that comply with the data on the temperature distribution in the water column of the modern Dead Sea.

I will suggest that this manucript must be published n the journal as it will make good contrbutions in this field of science.

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

On behalf of the authors, thank you for your positive review.

Best regards

Krzysztof Bukowski