Water Whiplash in Mediterranean Regions of the World

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The paper addresses an interesting topic. In general, the manuscript is of good quality. I made a few observations that require changes:

 

Lines: 28/29:

„Recently, extreme events have been shown 28 to occur more often in Mediterranean regions of the world“

That cannot be generalized for „Mediterranean“ areas. According to the IPCC AR6, there are no robust trends towards more droughts or floods. Reference 1 does not even look at measured data but is purely based on future simulations. Reference 2 only looks at California.

 

Line 16: Typo: For (not fo)

 

Line 31:

 

„Mediterranean regions are characterized by having mild winters with little, yet defined, precipitation periods and hot, dry summers“

Little precipitation in winter is incorrect. Some regions (e.g. Portugal) have a lot of rain in winter, the same amount as e.g. Germany.

 

Figure 5: Lines appear a little too thick

 

Line 273 (ENSO)

Note that not just ENSO but also other modes of variability play an important role for precipitation. For the Mediterranean region in Europe, Müller-Plath et al. 2022 have summarized effects of the Arctic Oscillation (AO), North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO), Mediterranean Oscillation (MOI). See Fig. 3 in https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-022-14028-w

 

Lüdecke et al. 2021 ( https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2214581821000240 ) analazed North Africa and did not find a significant ENSO effect for the North African part of the Mediterranean. Instead, effects of NAO and Indian Ocean Dipole (IOD) and Atlantic Multidecadal oscillation (AMO) were identified.

 

Line 296

Little precipitation is normal for Mediterranean regions,

Not true. Some Med regions received a lot of precipitation in winter.

 

Lines 302-304:

„For all regions, there are shorter intense wet periods and longer and less intense dry periods. This pattern implies the potential for flood risks as water whiplash potentially worsens in the future due to anthropogenic climate change“.

Why would flood risks increase withlonger dry periods? Does not seem to be logical. I would really leave out the future projections because the climate models are still very poor in resolving local and regional changes in preciptation. Stick to the results of your analysis and avoid overinterpretation.

Comments on the Quality of English Language

seems ok

Author Response

see attached 

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Please see the attached document.

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Comments on the Quality of English Language

It needs moderate editing.

Author Response

see attached 

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Dear Authors,

The paper by Madrigal et al. (2024) has generously improved a lot. The authors get big credit for their effort in improving the manuscript to be suitable for publication. They incorporated all the comments with essential equations and convincing reasons. In this regard, the paper needs no more revision and can be accepted in its present form. 

The reviewer congratulates the authors and looks forward to surfing the published version. 

Best Wishes 

Anonymous Reviewer