A 250-Year Winter Minimum Temperature Reconstruction Based on Tree Rings from Luoji Mountain, Southwest China
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
Dear authors of the manuscript forests-247386,
Your manuscript entitled 'A 250-year winter minimum temperature reconstruction based on tree-rings from the Luoji Mountain, southwest China' represents a new study using a native tree species. Such studies provide an important possibility to generate past climate data in sites with heterogeneous topography. However, going through your manuscript, I found some information necessary to add. My suggestions to improve the manuscripts are as follows:
1. The tree-ring width series have shown a very high correlation within the tree, but the between-tree correlation is very weak. The authors must add some explanation for this fact. In addition, it is also necessary to show a spaghetti plot for all series.
2. The first-order autocorrelation (AC1) is ~0.77, which is high and must be considered before making further statements.
3. In Figure 5a, it is apparent that there is high low-frequency correlation than in year-to-year variation. It seems like the robust correlation is due to the similar trend between the chronology and climate data but not due to the high coherency between them. It is necessary to check the correlation again after treating both to remove autocorrelation.
4. The authors have only mentioned the average correlation of the LOOCV method. It is highly recommended to add the range of correlation for each iteration of LOOCV for clarification. In addition, it is also recommended to try the k-fold verification method.
Thank you.
Author Response
Please see the attachment for the revised reply
Author Response File: 
Author Response.docx
Reviewer 2 Report
Dear authors,
First, I would like to thank you for presenting your results. Overall, I found that the work is very interesting. The study design setup and analysis were well performed. The article is understandably written and well-organized, contains all the components I would expect, and the sections are well-developed. The methodology is clearly explained, the results are well described, and the discussion is carried out very well. Good and sufficient bibliography allows readers with less knowledge of dendrochronology to get a lot of information. In my opinion, good paper.
I only have a few editorial comments as follows:
1. There is no reference to Figure 2 in the text
2. Figure 5 a and b - the lines showing the temperature reconstruction are a bit hard to read.
3. In meteorology, the term "air temperature" is usually used, not just "temperature". I would suggest using the term air temperature (in the Introduction) when first providing terminology related to meteorological data.
Best regards,
Author Response
Reviewer2：
- There is no reference to Figure 2 in the text
Response：Thank you for your constructive comment. We added Figure 2 in line 115.
- Figure 5 a and b - the lines showing the temperature reconstruction are a bit hard to read.
Response：Thank you for your constructive comment. We have redrawn the graph to improve the quality.
- In meteorology, the term "air temperature" is usually used, not just "temperature". I would suggest using the term air temperature (in the Introduction) when first providing terminology related to meteorological data.
Response：Thank you for your constructive comment. We have made the change accordingly (Line 35-36).
Reviewer 3 Report
The paper presents reconstruction of minimal winter temperatures over past 250 years based on dendroclimatic study of Abies georgei sampled on the southeast edge of the Tibetan Plateau. Yet there are a couple of points of minor importance which the authors may wish to consider:
Line 50 – “This region is the transition area from the Tibetan Plateau to the Sichuan Basin, which is an ideal place to study climate change” – why this is an ideal place? It has to be explained
Line 67 – This is the first time Abies georgei is mentioned, and its full name has to be provided. This comment concerns line 302 and 303 as well
Line 95 – In this section references to Table 2 and Fig. 2 have to be made. It is also very remarkable that mean correlation between trees of the regional chronology is so low (only 0.145). Was it that low between trees of the each sampling site? It seems that couple of words concerning this issue has to be said
Line 162 – It is better to discuss a model quality in the Result section
Line 192 – It is better to decipher Tmean, Tmax, Tmin and P in figure capture. This comment concerns other figure captions as well (including FFT and MMT abbreviations)
Line 382 – There are strong correlations between reconstructed Tmin and various climate indices. What about correlation between tree-ring indices and AMO, may it be better to use dendrochronology to reconstruct AMO instead of Tmin?
Author Response
Please see the attachment for the revised reply
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
