Spatiotemporal changes of heat waves and extreme temperatures  in the main cities of China from 1955 to 2014

Li, Kuo; Amatus, Gyilbag

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/nhess-20-1889-2020

Articles | Volume 20, issue 7

https://doi.org/10.5194/nhess-20-1889-2020

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

https://doi.org/10.5194/nhess-20-1889-2020

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

Articles | Volume 20, issue 7

Research article

|

02 Jul 2020

Research article |

| 02 Jul 2020

Spatiotemporal changes of heat waves and extreme temperatures in the main cities of China from 1955 to 2014

Kuo Li and Gyilbag Amatus

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Final revised paper (published on 02 Jul 2020)
Preprint (discussion started on 07 Jan 2020)

Interactive discussion

Status: closed

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

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RC1: 'Review report for manuscript nhess-2019-335', Anonymous Referee #1, 06 Feb 2020
- AC1: 'Thank you for your review!', Kuo Li, 26 Apr 2020
RC2: 'Review_NHess_Spatiotemporal changes of the Heat waves and extreme temperatures in the main cities of China from 1955-2014', Anonymous Referee #2, 20 Mar 2020
- AC2: 'Response to the review!', Kuo Li, 26 Apr 2020

Peer-review completion

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

ED: Reconsider after major revisions (further review by editor and referees) (29 Apr 2020) by Vassiliki Kotroni

AR by Kuo Li on behalf of the Authors (10 May 2020) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Referee Nomination & Report Request started (15 May 2020) by Vassiliki Kotroni

RR by Anonymous Referee #1 (24 May 2020)

RR by Anonymous Referee #2 (31 May 2020)

Suggestions for revision or reasons for rejection

This paper is the revised manuscript of the study entitled “Spatiotemporal Changes of Heat Waves and Extreme Temperatures in Main Cities of China from 1955 to 2014” (manuscript ID: nhess-2019-335). The authors followed many of the reviewer’s commends and the structure of the manuscript are improved. I have only some minor comments Finally, I believe that the revised manuscript accomplishes the Journal’s tasks and it can be published. More specific:
• In the physical explanation of the index HWI (line 156-166, page 7) following the presented example the HWI=(26/92 x 26/3+1)x(21/92+19/3+1)x(9/92+7/3+1) = 89.5. There is a mismatch between the two values (98.2 and 89.5), please provide the appropriate modification.
• The selection of the thresholds used in classification of the HWI, is subjective. It could have an impact on the result’s robustness. The annual average value of HWIs in Chongqing and Changsha is 13.7 and 9.5 respectively, which are much higher than the highest threshold of Table 1 (HWI>6). Moreover, using the previous example (line 156-166, page 7) the magnitude of the HWI is extremely higher than the highest threshold of Table 1 (HWI>6). For that reason, I strongly suggest to use an objective classification. The authors could make a distribution analysis of the HWI and then they can estimate the 1st (25% percentile), 2nd (50% percentile) and 3rd quantile ((75% percentile) and use them as thresholds.
HWI =1.0 No hazard
1.0＜HWI≤1st quantile Low hazard
1st quantile＜HWI≤2nd quantile Moderate hazard
2nd quantile＜HWI≤3rd quantile High hazard
HWI>3rd quantile Extreme high hazard

Figure 7 and its analysis should change accordingly.

• Finally, the quality of all figures remains poor. In the majority of the figures, the labels are too small, and it can not be read.

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ED: Publish subject to minor revisions (review by editor) (02 Jun 2020) by Vassiliki Kotroni

AR by Kuo Li on behalf of the Authors (03 Jun 2020) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Publish as is (05 Jun 2020) by Vassiliki Kotroni

Short summary

In recent years, heat waves have become more frequent in the world, e.g., in Europe, Australia, China and the US, at huge detriment to human health and natural resources. Thus we establish an integrated index of heat waves and extreme-temperature days to provide unified standards for assessing heat waves and hot years. It provides a clear picture of the evolution and spatial distribution of heat waves and hot years in China.