Hydrometeorological droughts in the Miño–Limia–Sil  hydrographic demarcation (northwestern Iberian Peninsula):  the role of atmospheric drivers

Sorí, Rogert; Vázquez, Marta; Stojanovic, Milica; Nieto, Raquel; Liberato, Margarida L. R.; Gimeno, Luis

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/nhess-20-1805-2020

Articles | Volume 20, issue 6

https://doi.org/10.5194/nhess-20-1805-2020

© Author(s) 2020. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Special issue:

Hydroclimatic extremes and impacts at catchment to regional...

https://doi.org/10.5194/nhess-20-1805-2020

© Author(s) 2020. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 20, issue 6

Research article

|

26 Jun 2020

Research article |

| 26 Jun 2020

Hydrometeorological droughts in the Miño–Limia–Sil hydrographic demarcation (northwestern Iberian Peninsula): the role of atmospheric drivers

Rogert Sorí, Marta Vázquez, Milica Stojanovic, Raquel Nieto, Margarida L. R. Liberato, and Luis Gimeno

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Final revised paper (published on 26 Jun 2020)
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Preprint (discussion started on 25 Sep 2019)
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Interactive discussion

Status: closed

AC: Author comment | RC: Referee comment | SC: Short comment | EC: Editor comment

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RC1: 'Review', Anonymous Referee #1, 29 Oct 2019
- AC1: 'Reply', Rogert Sorí Gómez, 31 Dec 2019
RC2: 'Review of the manuscript nhess-2019-314, entitled “Meteorological drought in the Miño-Limia-Sil hydrographic demarcation: The role of atmospheric drivers”, submitted by Rogert Sorí et al. for possible publication in Natural Hazards and Earth System ', Anonymous Referee #2, 06 Nov 2019
- AC2: 'Reply', Rogert Sorí Gómez, 31 Dec 2019

Peer-review completion

AR: Author's response | RR: Referee report | ED: Editor decision

ED: Reconsider after major revisions (further review by editor and referees) (31 Dec 2019) by Chris Reason

AR by Rogert Sorí Gómez on behalf of the Authors (22 Feb 2020) Manuscript

ED: Referee Nomination & Report Request started (02 Mar 2020) by Chris Reason

RR by Anonymous Referee #2 (15 Mar 2020)

Suggestions for revision or reasons for rejection

The authors have improved the paper considerably, following the comments raised in the earlier revision. The paper, from the scientific point of view, is appropriate for publication, but I believe that the manuscript can benefit from the following comments:

I. Major comments:
- In the Introduction, the authors should highlight the novelty/originality of their work by showing how their work is different from earlier studies conducting for the same study domain (e.g. Russo et al., 2015).
- The manuscript should be polished by a professional editor. It is not only the linguistic level but also the style. The text should be carefully edited to avoid repeated and trivial statements and reorganize several paragraphs.
- Have you tested that precipitation data in the study domain follow a log-logistic distribution? Fitting the SPEI to different statistical distributions can induce differences in SPEI values, especially extreme values (i.e. above 2 or below -2). I mean that there is always a degree of uncertainty in the calculation of the SPEI due to the effects of probability distributions and parameter errors.
- The authors adopted a daily weather type’s classification similar to earlier studies in the IP (e.g. Ramos et al., 2014), even the selected 16 MSLP points are typically the same and accordingly the frequency of obtained types is expected to be identical. As such, the size of the manuscript can be reduced by summarizing the methodological part related to weather type’s classification and referring mainly to the article by Ramos et al. 2014 or other similar studies, which described this method.
- The rationale behind the computation of SPEI at a 1-month timescale to define the meteorological drought is needed. Why the authors did not consider 3 or 6-month timescales?
- I have also a concern regarding the use of the E-OBS gridded dataset, mainly related to the development and processing procedures of this dataset and thus the uncertainty in precipitation data. According to Hofstra et al. (2009), this product suffers from temporal inhomogeneities in some records. Also, the density of stations in this product varies considerably over time. Have the authors validated the performance of this product against observational data in their domain? Overall, I think it is important to discuss the limitations of this product.
- I am wondering why the authors included two indices (AO and NAO) whose phases are mostly similar.
- I recommend adding a figure that shows the temporal variability of SPEI corresponding to the different EOFs.
- In the results and discussion, the topical sentences of many paragraphs are misleading.
- There is no need to use abbreviations for precipitation and maximum and minimum air temperatures.

II. Specific comments:

- L15: add the abbreviation (SPEI) and avoid the use of the full name of the index in the subsequent lines.
- In the abstract, it is not clear at which timescale the SPEI was computed?
- L16: “December” <> “and December”.
- L22: I suppose you refer to the “hydrological year”.
- L28: Define the “rainy season” and specify which timescales do you mean?

P2:
- L5-6: You should revise this statement clearly to distinguish between the thermal and aerodynamic forces of drought.
- L8-9: This statement should be elaborated thoroughly in the text.
- L13-15: This should be revised in the context that other studies –based on long-term data- showed non-significant trends in drought (e.g. Lloyd-Hughes and Saunders, 2002; Spinoni et al., 2017, 2019).
- L15: Do you refer to “air temperature” or “land surface temperature”?
- L16: “any trend” <> “any significant trend”.
- L19: “one” <> “as one”; “suffer” <> “suffer from”.
- L24-25: Language should be revised.

P3
- L13: a reference is needed.
- L14: “not any” <> “no”.
- L22: Revise the numbering.
- L23: “20 000” <> “20,000”.
- L25: add the separator “,” to the number.
- L27: “said”??
P4
- Figure 1: The panel belonging to the study area should be enlarged to show the topographical gradient and main sub-basins. The 16 points can be shown in an inset map.
- L19: “24° C” this belongs to maximum air temperature?
- L20: “regular” <> “regulated”.

P5
- Figure 2: The description of the boxplot and the whiskers should be revised carefully.
- L8-11: Please, define the climatic variables derived from E-OBS.

P6
- L26-28: Some citations of these works are needed.

P8
- L6: “the sum” <> “the maximum length”; “negative values” <> “negative values less than -0.84”.
- L15: “eigenvectors” <> “eigenvalues”.
- L19: “Mann-Kendall” <> “modified Mann-Kendall”; how the magnitude of change was assessed? At which timescale the significance was defined?

P9
- L5: “objective” <> “semi-objective”.
- L8: “over the IP” <> “over the IP and surrounding regions”.
- L12: “3-8” <> “4-9”.

P10
- L5: Delete “daily”.

P11
- L1: How is this finding verified in this study?
- L7: The amount of variance of EOFs 2 and 3 is too low. I am wondering whether you applied the correlation or covariance matrix for the input data.
- Figure 3: The plotted values seem to be very low!
- L25: This is not evident.

P12
- Figure 4: add the label to y-axis.
- L8: “on” <> “in”.
- Table 2: I am wondering that some values of the slope is statistically significant, while their values are very low (e.g. SPEI1). Please, revise the units carefully. Also, why was the statistical significance assessed using t-test, not MK test?

P13
- Table 3: “severe” <> “anomalous”; add the units to “severity” and “duration”.
- Figure 5: I am wondering that the P25 for some months correspond to 500-600 mm.

P14
- L1: “similarity” <> “homogeneity”.
- Figure 6: The plotted values are very low!
- L16: What do you mean by “removing the respective grand means”?
- L20-21: This description should be revised.

P18:
- Figure 9: “symbols” <> “dots”.

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ED: Reconsider after major revisions (further review by editor and referees) (19 Mar 2020) by Chris Reason

AR by Rogert Sorí Gómez on behalf of the Authors (22 Apr 2020) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Reconsider after major revisions (further review by editor and referees) (27 Apr 2020) by Chris Reason

ED: Referee Nomination & Report Request started (30 Apr 2020) by Chris Reason

RR by Anonymous Referee #2 (10 May 2020)

ED: Publish subject to minor revisions (review by editor) (11 May 2020) by Chris Reason

AR by Rogert Sorí Gómez on behalf of the Authors (16 May 2020) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Publish as is (30 May 2020) by Chris Reason

AR by Rogert Sorí Gómez on behalf of the Authors (01 Jun 2020) Manuscript

Post-review adjustments

AA: Author's adjustment | EA: Editor approval

AA by Rogert Sorí Gómez on behalf of the Authors (25 Jun 2020) Author's adjustment Manuscript

EA: Adjustments approved (26 Jun 2020) by Chris Reason

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