Modeling Insights into Precipitation Deuterium Excess as an Indicator of Raindrop Evaporation in Lanzhou, China

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

I appreciate the Editor to give me a chance to review an interesting and valuable paper. I found some merits in the both methodology and results. In my opinion, this paper has a good potential to be published in the journal. However, I have also some concerns on the different parts of the manuscript. If the author(s) address carefully to the comments, I’ll recommend publication of the manuscript in the journal:

• Add some of the most important quantitative results to the Abstract.
• Lines 35-37, cite this recent paper (Complexity of Forces Driving Trend of Reference Evapotranspiration and Signals of Climate Change) to show the importance of climate parameters:

https://doi.org/10.3390/atmos11101081

• In the last paragraph of the Introduction, the authors should clearly mention the weakness point of former works (identification of the gaps) and describe the novelties of the current investigation to justify us the paper deserves to be published in this journal.
• Discuss the main reasons for the regional and monthly variation of Δd in precipitation.
• The conclusion is too short and should be improved.
• In the Table, highlight values that are more important and discuss them for better understanding readers.
• The Results and Discussion section should be broken to sub-sections for better understanding readers.
• How can extend the results in other regions with similar/different climates?
• The quality of the language needs to improve by a native English speaker for grammatically style and word use.

Author Response

Dear reviewer：
Thank you very much for your suggestions for our article. It is of great help to our article and future scientific research. We have uploaded the reply comments as an attachment.

Kind regards

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

Apart from the interpretation of the box-weaves, statistical tests, e.g. poshoc, should be carried out in order to confirm the obtained relationships. It is important from the point of view of confirming the received relations and drawing appropriate conclusions. In order to confirm the impact of clusters in the data (which the authors suggest), the box-weave charts are an element for data visualisation, while cluster analysis is performed. The matching errors of the parameter estimation in the models in Figs. 11, 12 should be given. It should be confirmed with appropriate tests whether the obtained differences in the coefficient of determination values are significantly statistical. The values 0.80 and 0.77 are very close.    

Author Response

Dear reviewer:
Thank you very much for your suggestions for our article. It is of great help to our article and future scientific research. We have uploaded the reply comments as an attachment.

Kind regards

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

The authors have addressed the comments. I have no further comments.

Author Response

Dear reviewer:

Thank you very much for your valuable suggestions, which are of great help to our article and future research.

Kind regards

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

The authors have been very succinct in their comments and suggested amendments. Analysis of only average values makes it possible to analyse the phenomenon to a limited extent and the conclusions drawn are not necessarily reliable. The given R-values (difference 0.03) do not confirm the statistical difference, statistical test results are necessary.

Author Response

Dear reviewer:
Thank you very much for your suggestions for our article. It is of great help to our article and future scientific research. We have uploaded the reply comments as an attachment.

Kind regards

Author Response File: Author Response.docx