Climate Change and Extreme Events in Northeast Atlantic and Azores Islands Region

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report (Previous Reviewer 1)

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

I would like to thank the Authors for making many corrections in the text, including expanding the chapters "Material and methods" and "Conclusion.

There is still no statistical analysis of the results, which means there is no justification for the existence (or lack) of a trend, as I asked for in the previous review.

Please be sure to specify what statistical tests for trend were used - lines 188, 192, 200 and table 5 provide p-values, but it is not known what test was used and what level of significance was adopted. Is a monotonic or linear trend being investigated? What was the null hypothesis of the test? Was the test parametric (was the normality of distribution tested in such a situation?) or non-parametric?

Without providing this information, it is absolutely impossible to determine a trend (or lack thereof).

And the situation is quite serious, because the charts cannot clearly determine the existence of trends.

Without appropriate statistical tests, it is impossible to determine, for example, "significant bias of..." (lines 240, 386, etc..)

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report (Previous Reviewer 2)

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

 

In my opinion, the revised version of the article with title "Climate change and extreme events in Northeast Atlantic and Azores islands region" is improved compared to the previous one.

The authors have answered the reviewer's comments and also have followed the suggestions.

I suggest the publication of the article in the "Climate" Journal

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report (Previous Reviewer 1)

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The text added by the Authors is not the best. However, due to the work performed by the Authors, I agree to the publication of the article in this form.

In the future, however, I suggest adding a person to the team who will describe the statistical methods used and the calculations performed in a more correct way (in terms of statistical description).

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

This manuscript is a resubmission of an earlier submission. The following is a list of the peer review reports and author responses from that submission.

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The subject of the article is interesting, but unfortunately, the work does not seem to be finished. The chapter "Material and methods" consists of three short paragraphs - there is virtually no description of the research area and data, nor a description of the relevant methods. The same applies to the "Conclusion" chapter, which has 4 lines.

Anyway: in the article, on the basis of historical data from 1961-1990 for three annual indicators, two types of simulations were made: SSP2 4.5 and SSP2 8.5, which were plotted on the charts. Then, the possible increase in these indicators was read from the charts.

For me, this is definitely not enough for an article. There is no statistical analysis of the results, in fact there is no justification for the choice of such and not other calculation methods.

I am very glad that the authors used the Python language to prepare the data, because there are many statistical tests available in this language that can be used to analyze the data in this article. These tests are absolutely necessary to confirm the theses in the work. For example, it is not possible to determine the existence of a trend (e.g. in line 142, 264, 265) without using an appropriate test, and even more so to claim that the trend is statistically significant (line 257) - an appropriate test must be performed at the assumed significance level.

 

Therefore, since there are no statistical analyzes and virtually no text for the chapters "Material and Methods" and "Conclusion", unfortunately I cannot recommend recommend this work (in this form) for publication in the journal Climate.

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

 

Comments to authors

 

Review of Article “Climate change and extreme events on Azores islands environment” by Fernanda Carvalho, Maria Meirelles, Diamantino Henriques, João Porteiro, Patrícia Navarro and Helena Cristina Vasconcelos

 

This article deals with the changes of surface air temperature, mean annual precipitation and also climatological extremes (referring to the maximum number of consecutive days with precipitation 20 mm and number of tropical nights) for historical period and two future scenarios (SSP2-4.5 and SSP5-8.5).

In my opinion, the authors should improve some points of this article. In my opinion, it is extremely important the authors update their analysis providing results from more than 3 CMIP6 simulations. CMIP6 provides plenty of model simulations (3 simulations are extremely limited to provide significant elements regarding climate change over an important climatic region such as Azores). Additionally, an evaluation of the variables of CMIP6 that were used in this work, using other data as a reference dataset (for instance reanalysis data sets) or a discussion over the text (adding literature), would be valuable for the scientific community.  I believe that a discussion regarding the results of this analysis and results from previous studies (for example works that CMIP5 simulations are used) would further improve this work. Finally, I suggest the authors take under consideration the following points and recommendations.

I believe that this article has the potential to be published in “Climate” Journal after a Major revision.

 

1.       The authors said that “Coupled Model Intercomparison Phase 6 (CMIP6) projections are used for the northeast Atlantic region to evaluate daily extreme climate events in large scale for the Azores region”. I suggest the authors refer the number of simulations that were used in this work.

 

2.       I suggest the authors provide a map of the region of Azores in “Material and Methods” section. In my opinion, the indication of the studied region (37°N-40°N and 32°W-25°) in the map will be helpful for the reader. Additionally, I believe that it is important to discuss about the spatial resolution of the models regarding their ability to reproduce the main characteristic of atmospheric features in this region. 

 

3.       In lines 29-32 the authors present some elements available from AR5. Could you also provide elements from the current AR6.

 

4.       In line 68 I suggest to remove the “And”.

 

5.       In line 83 replace the “And” with “and”.

 

6.       Is Figure 1 one of the results of the analysis? If yes, I suggest the authors transfer this figure and the related discussion in “Results” section.

 

7.       In “Material and Methods” section the authors said “Regarding the projections until the end of the 21st century, for the same geographical region - Azores region between 37°N-40°N and 32°W-25°W the results of 3 models of the CMIP6 project (table 1) were used for the SSP scenarios (Shared Socioeconomic Pathways).” Why did you use only two scenarios (namely, the SSP2-4.5 and SSP5-8.5) for the analysis and not others? Please clarify this point.

 

8.       I recommend the authors refer the data that used for their analysis also in the “Material and Methods” section.

 

9.       I am a bit critical regarding the results of this study. The number of 3 model simulations that analyzed here is extremely limited. Have you checked if the selected simulations can reproduce adequately the studied factors over the Azores region? CMIP6 project provides a large number of simulations. In lines 121-129 the authors provide some information regarding the CMIP6 models but, it is unclear to me, which are the criteria to select only the 3 models that used here for this analysis? I strongly suggest the authors update their analysis including more CMIP6 simulations. 

 

10.   Is it correct that the authors present results from the mean of 3 model simulations (for historical period and two SSP scenarios)? The model simulations have different spatial resolution. Do the authors interpolate the variables in a common grid resolution in order to do the calculations? Please clarify this point over the text.  

 

11.   In line 110 the authors must provide the title of Table.

 

12.   In line 141 the authors said that “The anomaly of annual mean of near surface air temperature in the Azores region and in the simulated period 1850-2014 shows a positive trend of 0.02 K/decade (Figure 3)”. Do you mean results from the Figure 2? Is this (positive) trend statistically significant?

 

Additionally, are the results in Figure 3 statistically significant all over the map? Could you please clarify this point?

 

13.   Do the maps, which are presented in this work (for example Figure 3), show the mean of the selected model simulations? Please clarify this point over the text.

 

14.   In my opinion, the authors should add more literature in the “Discussion” section. In the first part of the section they present the results of the analysis. I suggest the authors discuss a bit more their results adding more literature. What about previous studies that used other datasets, such as CMIP5 model simulations? (The authors provide some elements in lines 53-55. I suggest the authors discuss more their results providing literature).