The Pacific Drought Knowledge Exchange: A Co-Production Approach to Deliver Climate Resources to User Groups

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Dear authors,

Below are the comments.

- The abstract should be shortened (up to 200 words).

 - Page 4, line 119: Feet (6,500 ft) are mentioned. I suggest using one unit of measure (meters: 1981.2 m). The same applies to line 128 (equalize, use either m or feet).

 - Page 4. Managers are mentioned several times (eg lines: 129, 130, previous pages). I suggest using another term (eg experts or expert team), because managers are more coordinators and less experts. It's just a suggestion, I might be wrong!

 - Page 4, chapter 2.2. Consider deleting it completely or reformulating it and moving it to subchapter 2.3. By the way, I would keep the term "managers" in this section.

 - Page 5. Subchapter 2.3.1. Historical Climate Data. An essential part of the manuscript, but confusing!!! It should be clarified... First, the average amounts of precipitation are from the Atlas of Precipitation (line 166)... For what period is the average? Second, "Estimates of daily precipitation... (line 168). What assessments, why assessments? Were measured daily data from meteorological stations or some kind of estimates used? This is unclear, we need to explain what it is about!!!! Third, Linear trends (1990-2014)... (line 172). Why the period 1990-2014? Explain!!! The second paragraph (lines 180-185) is completely unclear..??? Please, it is very important that everything is crystal clear about the data used!!! Which institution provided the data, did you have daily data or did you estimate it, did you examine the relative homogeneity of the series...? Please communicate these things clearly.

 - Page 5. Subchapter 2.3.2. Drought Calculations. Estimates again (line 189)!!! Are the monthly amounts of precipitation estimated or obtained by measurements from meteorological stations? Unclear!!! In relation to which normal is the SPI calculated - state the exact period (line 192)? Which drought is represented by SPI-12 and which by SPI-3? There is data for the USDM index for 2000-2020, so comparisons are made for the entire period!!! How do you compare the USDM for the period before 2000, which is the whole period? What are the "Other extracted ecological data" for T&E species, fire risk and occurrence? Please explain this in more detail!!!

 - Page 6. Subchapter 2.3.3. Future Climate Projections. Please specify correctly: which Global Climate Model (GCM) was used, which Regional Climate Model (RCM) was used, what was the horizontal resolution of the RCM used? Was the bias correction made and for which base period?

 - Results. There is too much information in this chapter - descriptions of meetings, doghovors, negotiations... The scientific aspect, concrete results should be emphasized more!!!

 General conclusion: The manuscript has a more descriptive than scientific character.

Kind regards

Author Response

Responses in attached PDF

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Longman et al. compiled datasets from different sources and translated them into factsheets for their selected partners to help with management planning. The paper is well-written, and the work is meaningful for city management in Hawaii under climate change. However, there are still some questions that are not clear enough.

 

1)      For the introduction part, it would be better for me if you can add a paragraph to state why you choose Hawaii as the study area, and the problem caused by drought in Hawaii. It would be helpful to make the motivation and significance of the study clear.

2)      In 2.1 Site description: Is all the information of the sites you described here is found by your study? If not, please add citations in the corresponding sentences. And please go through the whole manuscript, and add citations to the sentences that contain the knowledge or information that is not found or proposed by your study.

3)      Section 2.3: The authors compiled lots of datasets in the study, and I think it would be clearer if you can list all the datasets you used in your study in a table (in the manuscript or supplement), with the information of the datasets, such as data source (or doi), format, spatial and temporal resolution, unit, time window,…

4)      Section 2.3.3: Will the downscaling methods lead to biases or uncertainties in the results?

5)      Section 3.3: It would be better if you can show an example of the factsheet of one site here, or add it to the supplement.

6)      L314: “ddecisions” to decisions

 

7)      Figure 2: what does the base map colored in light and dark orange mean? Does it mean elevation? Explain it in the figure note.

Author Response

Responses in attached PDF.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

The manuscript entitled “The Pacific Drought Knowledge Exchange: A co-production approach to deliver climate resources to user groups” aimed to explore how a formal partnership-driven co-production process could facilitate climate change, climate variability, and drought knowledge exchange within three pilot sites. Though the paper is well written. Major shortcomings with the manuscript are as follows.

The abstract can be improved on a qualitative basis but some quantitative information/ values can be added to summarize it.

·        A clear hypothesis of the study was not found, and an ambiguity lies in the research questions and objectives of the study which should be flowing from the literature search.

       The introduction section could be compartmentalized, and comprehensive.

·         Kindly improve the scientific write-up of the manuscript.

·       The pictorial representation of results is throughout the manuscript, try to add more information pictorial information regarding your study.

·         Certain things in the manuscript are vague i.e., the impact of the study on users.

·         It would be better and make things clear to explain the results and discuss them in one heading.  The separate heading for the discussion can be merged with the results heading.

·         How this PDKE help the drought risk reduction and what will the pros and cons of substitute climate resources approach for the user?

·         Kindly improve sections 3.2 & 4 for the clarity of the general readers.

·         How to relate PDKE with sustainable development goals. Will this PDKE approach meet with SDGs?

       The conclusion section is very lenthy. Please reduce and concise accordingly. 
Try to add more figures especially from results and discussion section    

Author Response

Thank you for your review

Responses in attached PDF.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Dear Authors,

Thank you for considering my suggestions. I suggest publishing the work.

Greetings.

Reviewer 2 Report

Thanks for your consideration of my review. The responses are suitable and the manuscript has significantly improved compared with the first version. I suggest accepting the manuscript for publication.