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Peer-Review Record

Analysis of Anomalies Due to the ENSO and Long-Term Changes in Extreme Precipitation Indices Using Data from Ground Stations

by Luis Alberto Vargas-León and Juan Diego Giraldo-Osorio *
Reviewer 2:
Reviewer 3: Anonymous
Submission received: 12 July 2023 / Revised: 31 October 2023 / Accepted: 1 November 2023 / Published: 1 January 2024

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The article "Anomalies due to ENSO and long-term changes in extreme precipitation indices, using data from ground stations" is well structured, with excellent writing and well grounded in the statistical methodologies of time series analysis and analysis of climate trends with the ETCCDI indices. I recommend accepting, with minor adjustments:

- Figure 1 lacks the indication of "North" and the scale; highlight Colombia in Figure 1A, to facilitate visualization when compared with other countries in the region.

- Figures 7 to 12 could be considered as Appendices to the article to make it more concise since the consolidation of the results of these figures can be found in Figure 6;

- The green line in Figure 13 is labeled "CLP" in the caption and the title of the figure appears as "LTC" (this term is used elsewhere in the article);

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Please, see the attached document.

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

With the 880-station observed daily precipitation, the authors built eleven (11) annual time series of extreme precipitation indices (EPI) for frequency, intensity and duration categories. And they further calculated and compared the ENSO-driven anomalies and long-term change anomalies, and they concluded that the EPI are generally “wetter” during La Nina hydrological years but “drier” during El Nino hydrological years, and ENSO-induced anomalies are more important than the long-term changes. Generally, the structure of the manuscript is clear, and the results are reasonable and interesting. The detailed comments are listed in the following.

1.   Line 168-169: Is the precipitation from ERA5 reanalysis accurate enough for filling the missing data? Have you done some tests for data validation at the ground stations?

2.   Line 286-287: It seems that the two periods are simply defined by equally dividing the whole study period into two parts, correct? Is it appropriate to reflect the long-term change?

3.   Line 305-306: It seems that the method of quantile mapping in this study is based on the basic assumption that both ERA5 and observation have the same probability distribution function. However, according to Figure 4b, the CDF with ERA5 has some biases from the observation as marked by the authors, does it influence the filling results? 

4.   Line 340-362: How to obtain the percentage values of stations for different cases? Is it based on Table 2-4? If so, please give some brief explanations about how to get these results, or at least give an example for the percentage value.

5.   Line 369: The dot colors for NAY and NOY in Figure 6d and other similar figures are too close to discern their differences. I suggest the authors change the dot colors with large contrast.

6.   Section 4 should be named as “4. Summary and Discussion”. And at the same time, I suggest the authors make a brief summary for the characteristics of the eleven (11) EPI in three categories due to ENSO and long-term change, especially highlighting those with significant anomalies.

7.   Line 484-386: I think the conclusion for PRCPTOT should be comparable to those previous studies regarding the influence of ENSO on the Colombian precipitation (Line 468-472), and the summaries of the two paragraphs should be put together.

8.   Some typos and grammar errors: Line 36 “are display” should be “are displayed”; Line 58 “hey” should be “they”; Line 73 “mention” should be “mentioned”; Line 94 “recorded” should be “records”; Line 219 “thiw” should be “they”; Line 299 “between” should be “among”? Line 497 “percentaje” should be “percentage”.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Dear Editor, Dear Authors,

I thank the authors for their efforts and the integration of my comments and suggestions into the manuscript.

In particular a new paragraph was introduced in the introduction relating to the different types of ENSO, Eastern Pacific (EP) and Central Pacific (CP) ENSO events. But the description of these events must not ignore recent work on their temporality (e.g., 

Nan Chen chennan and Andrew J. Majda chennan, Simple dynamical models capturing the key features of the Central Pacific El Niño, PNAS, 2016, 113 (42) 11732-11737, https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1614533113   Mandy Freund et al., Higher frequency of Central Pacific El Niño events in recent decades relative to past centuries, 2019, Nature Geoscience 12(6):1-6, DOI:10.1038/s41561-019-0353-3   J-L Pinault, The Anticipation of the ENSO: What Resonantly Forced Baroclinic Waves Can Teach Us (Part II), J. Mar. Sci. Eng. 2018, 6, 63; doi:10.3390/jmse6020063)

Based on the observation of the Quadrennial resonantly forced baroclinic waves, ENSO events are classified according to the time lag of their occurrence (their expected date of occurrence compared to a regular 4-year cycle). Almost all CP events occur either when −1 year <lag < −0.5 years or 1 year < lag < 1.5 years, that is to say, exclusively during the first semester every two years: no EP event can occur at the same time.

In particular, studies relating to the annual and quadrennial baroclinic waves in the equatorial Pacific can no longer be ignored by researchers involved in the forecasting, characterization and understanding of ENSO.

Author Response

Please, read the file attached.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The authors' responses to the review comments are fine, and I think it is acceptable for publication now.

Author Response

Please, read the file attached.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

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