Impact of Early Season Temperatures in a Climate-Changed Atmosphere for Michigan: A Cool-Climate Viticultural Region

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

I have provided comments, edits and suggestions in the attached PDF file. Figure 1 was missing in the version I downloaded.

Verb tense needs to be checked throughout the manuscript. Previous work should be in the past tense.

The use of first-person vs. third-person needs to be addressed. Pick one and use it throughout. See LN 158 and 165.

Several sentences need review and revision. Specifically LN32-33, LN52-55, LN 281-285, and LN291-293.

Using terms such as "clearly", "considerably", "evidently", "devastating"  in the results section are problematic since my idea is probably different from yours. Since there were statistically significant results, can you focus on those results and provide some indication of how different the values are. 10 X? 10%?

The figures (Figure 2 and Figure 3) are lacking some indication of the variability of mean values used along with where statistical significances are.

Figure 4 only shows up in the discussion. Is there merit to putting in the results section?

Please check your references. #2 and #3 have the same year (2016a).

 

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

I have provided comments, edits and suggestions in the attached PDF file.

We have made changes based on those recommendations in the paper.

Figure 1 was missing in the version I downloaded.

Figure 1 has been added. We apologize for the confusion.

Verb tense needs to be checked throughout the manuscript. Previous work should be in the past tense.

We have made some grammatical changes to the manuscript.

The use of first-person vs. third-person needs to be addressed. Pick one and use it throughout. See LN 158 and 165.

Several sentences need review and revision. Specifically LN32-33, LN52-55, LN 281-285, and LN291-293.

We addressed concerns with grammar or awkward wording as recommended.

Using terms such as "clearly", "considerably", "evidently", "devastating"  in the results section are problematic since my idea is probably different from yours. Since there were statistically significant results, can you focus on those results and provide some indication of how different the values are. 10 X? 10%?

We amended where possible. For example - "evidently" was scrubbed for more concrete language in that sentence. Same with "considerably." "Devastating" was replaced with "damaging." However, "clearly" was left because we were talking about the presence (or lack) of frost which is something usually needs to be visually confirmed. We eliminated the use of "significantly" where it was thought that statistical significance was needed - "significant" was used as a replacement for "large" or "considerable" or other words denoting something like "big."

The figures (Figure 2 and Figure 3) are lacking some indication of the variability of mean values used along with where statistical significances are.

Figures 2 and 3 were amended

Figure 4 only shows up in the discussion. Is there merit to putting in the results section?

This is a good point, but having moved the figure around and shared with other researchers, it's agreed that the section - while displaying results - serves as a pivot to further discussion. Moving it to results makes for an imbalance between results and discussion.

Please check your references. #2 and #3 have the same year (2016a).

Thank you for noticing that. It was meant to be 2016a and 2016b. It has been amended.

We appreciate the reviewer's time and effort in helping make this paper stronger.

Reviewer 2 Report

Impact of Early Season Temperatures in a Climate-Changed At-2 mosphere of Michigan a Cool-Climate Viticultural Region

 

General comments

 

This study was highly promising for me because of the introduction is very exhaustive and I liked the description of changes of conditions that influenced transformation for a species of vine crop to another. However, the results demonstrated that the analysis does not reach the objectives which are not clear and detailed correctly. The analysis is too basic and simplistic. I feel that this manuscript in this state cannot be published, and it should consider a more extensive analysis and more ambitious aims (for example): calculate the potential adaptability for the different cultivars of Vitis in the territory, the authors only used forcing accumulation in his model but it also is very relevent the chilling accumulation for the autumn and winter temperatures, doing the same analysis using the gridded database and not only the average temperatures as I think the authors used for the entire surface, projecting the results to the future using the projections by the end of the 21st century, adding also new scenarios at least RCP4.5 as not so pessimistic scenario, if possible using the new RCP-SSP scenarios implemented for the recent 6th Report of IPCC. I encourage the authors to extent the study some of these ways.

 

Specific comments

 

- Abstract (line 8): Better "...observed (2001-2012) and projected climate change..."

 

- Abstract (lines 18-19): What is the meaning here of "growing season", is not it referred to the annual increasing of 3-5 ºC?

 

- Introduction (line 44): What is considered as "growing season temperatures", average temperatures during the growing season? But what phenological period is considered as growing season?

 

- Introduction (line 90): I think the authors meant "high spatiotemporal resolution" instead of "scale". Check in the rest of the manuscript.

 

- Experiments (lines 98-106): Please, to incorporate specific climate data. For example, the expression "moderated temperatures" may be confused. Better, to indicate mean annual temperature, and so on.

 

 - Experiments (lines 142-144): A reference explaining the scale of the different atmospheric processes is needed. Orlanski (1975) could help.

Orlanski, I., 1975. A rational subdivision of scales for atmospheric processes. Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society 56, 527–530. https://doi.org/www.jstor.org/stable/26216020

 

- Experiments (lline 146 and others): I am not sure, but the term "terroir" perhaps is not a very known term beyond of local knowledge, if it is true, please use another concept ("spatial variability"?) and explain here, not only in introduction.

 

- Experiments (lines 147-157): Did both models use the same spatial resolution? If not, how was it worked with different spatial resolution?

 

- Experiments (lines 177-181): Please, the authors should include a reference in the equation of GDD from the original source.

 

- Results (lines 190-191): The authors used "WRF-Observed" for current conditions and "PGW model" for RCP8.5 future scenario. Why did they use a very complicated notation for referring both time horizon and not simply "current conditions/future conditions". I think it is more clear for the readers. Also, I think it had been recommendable using at least RCP4.5 scenario, not only the most pessimistic future scenario.

 

- Results (lines 2020-2015: I think the authors mixed results and discussion. Please, results sections only with your own results without interpretation.

 

- In general, with respect to the previous comments, I definitely did not understand well the objectives of the work, they should be correctly and clearly presented. But, I feel the analysis does not reflect well the intention to show potential changes spatially distributed, in fact the authors pointed out insistently the fact of spatial resolution, and after they only present one average. Then, this study does not achieve the objectives for showing the spatial variability.

 

- Figure 4 is not relevant. The authors compare the temperature from observations with respect to a model of climate change. The true value of these scenarios is when you project this model to the future for doing predictions about potential changes based on different new conditions. In current conditions, these models are only useful to train the models as baseline. I do not find the utility for comparing both in the current conditions.

Author Response

Please see attachment

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

Dear authors,

First I want to congratulate you for the article, and in the following I want to send you some comments:

 

Line 97.  Figure 1 is missing  

Line 148.  “….from October 2000 to September 2013 ….”. The year 2013 appears in the text, but in Tables 1 and 2 it appears as the study interval 2001-2012. Please clarify this aspect ...

Line 182. Is the mathematical formula proposed and used for the calculation of GDD a new one, experimental or is it already validated by other researchers?

Why didn't you use the Huglin index (1986) ? 

Pierre Huglin: Biologie et écologie de la vigne. Lavoisier (Edition Tec & Doc), Paris 1986, ISBN 2-60103-019-4. S. 292 (371 S.).

 

All the best!

 

Author Response

First I want to congratulate you for the article, and in the following I want to send you some comments:

We thank the reviewer for their kind comments and appreciate the comments they have made toward making this paper stronger.

Line 97.  Figure 1 is missing  

Figure 1 has been added. We apologize for the confusion.

Line 148.  “….from October 2000 to September 2013 ….”. The year 2013 appears in the text, but in Tables 1 and 2 it appears as the study interval 2001-2012. Please clarify this aspect ...

The dataset is from Oct 2000 to Sept 2013 but because we were working with entire growing seasons (Apr-Oct), we did not have a full year in 2000 or 2013. Our first full season of data was 2001 and our last was 2012. In this case we are only describing the original dataset.

Line 182. Is the mathematical formula proposed and used for the calculation of GDD a new one, experimental or is it already validated by other researchers?

This is the basic, original calculation for GDD. It has been used by many other researchers. There are other, newer updates, but we used this one for its simplicity of use and understanding.

Why didn't you use the Huglin index (1986) ? 

We considered the Huglin index in previous studies (as far back as Schultze et al 2013) because of the latitude component, but decided against it because it did not resolve highly importantly things like aspect and slope. As such we have used it in several studies since. We figure that if we were to go more complex in terms of thermal accumulation, we would used Biologically Effective Degree Days - but GDD still effectively communicates the message we want to send that is both simple to understand even for those without a viticulture background and stays uniform with previous studies.

Pierre Huglin: Biologie et écologie de la vigne. Lavoisier (Edition Tec & Doc), Paris 1986, ISBN 2-60103-019-4. S. 292 (371 S.).

All the best!

Thank you, you too!

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

see edits and comments on PDF file

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

We have taken in the recommended edits and comments and provided track changes as we fixed the paper. We accepted nearly all of the comments and thank the Reviewer for going through this paper with a fine-toothed comb not once, but twice, and appreciate their effort. This paper is far stronger today than it was after the first submission.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf