Evaluation of the Homogenization Adjustments Applied to European Temperature Records in the Global Historical Climatology Network Dataset

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

In this paper, an attempt has been made to investigate the potential of homogenization adjustments (Pairwise Homogenization Algorithm” (PHA))  on the temperature. I find that the results are interesting and the figures are of good quality. It has the potential to be published in the journal “Atmosphere” after addressing some minor concerns. Therefore, I suggest a minor revision.

Comments:

1) The title of the manuscript is slightly confusing needs to rephrase. It would be better not to use abbreviations in title. 

2) Abstract consists of too much information that must be part of the Introduction or methodology.

3) Authors have cited too many studies, some of which are unnecessary. It should be better to cite  only original studies.

4) Motivation of the study is lacking. Need to be included in the last section of the Introduction.

5) Line 543-546; "We acknowledge that the Pairwise Homogenization Algorithm (PHA) [27] used by 542 NOAA for homogenizing the GHCN since 2011 [3,4] has performed quite well over the 543 years against various benchmarking tests [27,34–36]." is not clear. Please restruct it. It is also suggested to acknowledge in the appropriate section. It is not the part of Introduction.

6)I noticed some mess in the figure numbering, for example, at lines 324-325:

"The dates of these three 324 events are indicated by vertical (blue) dashed lines in each of the panels except (b), and 325 details on the events are provided in the figure caption".

Author are using 3a and 3b and also b. It is advised to maintain consistency throughout the manuscript.

 

 

 

Author Response

Dear Reviewer 1,

Thank you for your encouraging and helpful review of our manuscript. We have made several minor revisions in light of your suggestions.

1) The title of the manuscript is slightly confusing needs to rephrase. It would be better not to use abbreviations in title. 

The Global Historical Climatology Network dataset is widely referred to in the community by its GHCN abbreviation. So, we felt it could be useful to include both the full name and the abbreviation in the title. However, we appreciate that abbreviations in the title can sometimes be off-putting, and we provide the abbreviation in the abstract.

Therefore, we have removed it from the title as you suggest. We have also rephrased the title slightly by adding the word “dataset”.

2) Abstract consists of too much information that must be part of the Introduction or methodology.

Good point. We have removed some of the “background” information from the abstract

3) Authors have cited too many studies, some of which are unnecessary. It should be better to cite only original studies.

In general, we agree that it can be good practice to minimize the total citations where possible. However, we believe that in this case it is also important to ground our findings and their significance within the context of the current literature. Therefore, we think the 93 references we cited are both necessary and suitably representative of the relevant literature.

Indeed, there were actually several hundred relevant references that we read and considered before limiting our citations to these ones.

Also, the journal doesn’t have any specific reference limits and we include less than a hundred references (93 in total) which seems to be well within the norms for previous articles published in this journal.

Finally, Reviewer 3 has actually suggested that we should have included even more references, although he/she didn’t suggest any in particular.

Therefore, after some reflection, we have kept the reference as is, but we thank you for prompting us to consider our reference list more carefully.

4) Motivation of the study is lacking. Need to be included in the last section of the Introduction.

5) Line 543-546; "We acknowledge that the Pairwise Homogenization Algorithm (PHA) [27] used by 542 NOAA for homogenizing the GHCN since 2011 [3,4] has performed quite well over the 543 years against various benchmarking tests [27,34–36]." is not clear. Please restruct it. It is also suggested to acknowledge in the appropriate section. It is not the part of Introduction.

Thanks for these useful comments.

We have adopted your suggestion of rephrasing this section of the discussion. We have also added this point to the introduction along with some extra discussion on the motivation for the study to the introduction.

6)I noticed some mess in the figure numbering, for example, at lines 324-325:

"The dates of these three 324 events are indicated by vertical (blue) dashed lines in each of the panels except (b), and 325 details on the events are provided in the figure caption".

Author are using 3a and 3b and also b. It is advised to maintain consistency throughout the manuscript.

Fixed.

Thanks!

Reviewer 2 Report

The manuscript treats the Assessment of Homogenization Adjustments Applied to the European Temperature Record in the Global Historical Climatology for 24 European Countries.

The topic of the manuscript is really interesting and treats relevant metadata of cell history for more than 800 European GHCN stations. Data from these weather stations were the basis for the analysis.

Previous studies have found that PHA can work well in correcting synthetic time series when certain artificial prejudices are introduced. However, its effect with real-world data has been less studied. In this manuscript, different breakpoints were identified and the analysis was performed for a set of stations from 24 European countries for which metadata on the history of the station was available. The research revealed inconsistencies in the identified breakpoints, and thus adjustments.

Тhe paper is quite well written, understandable and easy to read.

The conclusions are written in accordance with the evidence and arguments in the text.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer 2,

Thank you for your encouraging review and assessment of our manuscript!

Reviewer 3 Report

The paper is well organized and is interesting. Please study the manuscript for punctuation and English language Grammar. 

In the revised version of the paper, the authors are asked to clearly state which is the novelty of the paper for which it deserves publication. The paper should be scientifically edited to follow strictly instructions of the journal. The list of references could be updated and enriched with more recent papers on the subject. More information on the research results should be provided in the abstract section. In the revised version of the paper, the authors are asked to clearly state, what is the novelty of the paper. Write limitations of the study. If any. The authors should be considered the discussions of the results, and strengthened the results and discussions of the article, bringing a more in-depth analysis. That means, they need a more in-depth discussion. 

Author Response

Dear Reviewer 3,

Thank you for your encouraging and helpful review of our manuscript.

We have made several minor revisions to the manuscript in light of your feedback.

In the revised version of the paper, the authors are asked to clearly state, what is the novelty of the paper. Write limitations of the study. If any.

Ok. We have also added some extra discussion on the novelty of the paper and its limits to the introduction.

The paper should be scientifically edited to follow strictly instructions of the journal. The list of references could be updated and enriched with more recent papers on the subject.

Actually, since our analysis discusses the versions of a dataset that has been in use since 2011, we think it is important to consider the literature over the entire 2011-present period as well as the most recent papers. In fact, more than 70% of our references were published between 2011-present. So, we think this is a reasonable representation of the relevant literature from this period. Moreover, nearly 1/3 of our references are less than 4 years old, i.e., 2018 or later.

Finally, Reviewer 1 has actually suggested the opposite to you, i.e., that we have included too many references! Although he/she didn’t identify any particular references to remove.

Therefore, after some reflection, we have kept the reference as is, but we thank you for prompting us to consider our reference list more carefully.

More information on the research results should be provided in the abstract section

We have slightly revised the abstract in light of the comments by you and Reviewer 1 to place less emphasis on the background to our analysis and more emphasis on our findings

The authors should be considered the discussions of the results, and strengthened the results and discussions of the article, bringing a more in-depth analysis. That means, they need a more in-depth discussion.  

Thank you again for your encouraging and constructive review. In light of your comment and some similar comments by Reviewer 1, we have made some minor revisions to both the introduction and discussion to better explain the significance of our analysis.