Water Balance of the Regulated Arid Lake as an Indicator of Climate Change and Anthropogenic Impact: The North (Small) Aral Sea Case Study

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Reviewer comments for the manuscript titled ''Water balance of the regulated arid lake as an indicator of climate change and anthropogenic impact: the North (Small) Aral Sea case study'' (ID: water-2312971)

 The authors discuss the modern water balance condition of the Small Aral Sea and future projections under four general circulation models and three scenarios. The topic is interesting with a thoughtful analysis and the research contributes to the literature in several ways. I recommend acceptance pending a few fairly minor issues.

 1.     Line 48. Provide the source (reference number in square brackets) next    to '1990'.

2.        The Figure 1 is not mentioned in the text.

3.     For clarity reasons, mark the various images of Figure 2 with a, b etc., rephrasing the relevant text. Check for similar cases throughout the text.

4.      Figures must be as simple as possible. For example, there are too many lines in Figures 4 and 6 which confuse rather than clarify.

5.   Check for typos, omissions etc. in 'References'. For example, replace  'Izhitskaya, E.' with ' Izhitskaya, E.S.' and 'Egorov, A.' with 'Egorov, A.V.' (line 397).

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

 

1. Please see the text editing carefully.

2. At the end of the introduction, please highlight the novelty.

3. Also, relate the study with recent studies

 

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

This paper investigates the water balance of the regulated arid lake as an indicator of climate change and anthropogenic impact. The subject of the research suits the journal’s scope. The main points that need to be revised are listed below:

·         Introduction is not very informative. It is more like a study area description rather than an introduction part. Some general remarks must be added. For instance, the importance of lake ecosystems must be highlighted. Moreover, hydrometeorological threats that have been found in the literature that threaten their volume must be added such as alluviation (Stefanidis et al., 2011) and drought (Myronidis et al., 2012)

Stefanidis, P., Stefanidis, S., & Tziaftani, F. (2011). The threat of alluviation of lakes resulting from torrents (case study: Lake Volvi, north Greece). International Journal of Sustainable Development and Planning, 6(3), 325-335.

 

Myronidis, D., Stathis, D., Ioannou, K., & Fotakis, D. (2012). An integration of statistics temporal methods to track the effect of drought in a shallow Mediterranean Lake. Water Resources Management, 26, 4587-4605.

 

·         Also, some highlights of the possible impacts and changes in hydrological cycle components must be added according to the latest IPCC report (https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg2/).

·         Please remove figure 1 from the introduction part

·         Clearly state the innovation points of the current research and the research gap answered herein.

·         Mention some research considering the effects of the climate model's spatial characteristics and RCP scenarios on model performance (eg https://scibulcom.net/en/article/aMmP8TQzY20cA5aOesF7 )

·         The discussion part is missing. Authors should discuss the results and how they can be interpreted from the perspective of previous studies and of the working hypotheses. The findings and their implications should be discussed in the broadest context possible and the limitations of the work highlighted. Future research directions may also be mentioned.  

 

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 3 Report

The article improved and can now be accepted