Dear Markus Augenstein, Susanna Mohr, and Michael Kunz!

Thank you for the submission of your very interesting manuscript “Influence of the North Atlantic Oscillation on annual spatio-temporal lightning clusters in western and central Europe ”.

As you know, two reviewers have now provided detailed reviews, which you have replied in thoughtful detail to. The reviewers recommended minor to major revisions, and therefore I would like to invite you to submit a revised version of your manuscript.

Would you please also provide an ‘author’s reply’ to the reviewers (feel free to use the same words that you used in what you have already uploaded). Please can you also include a track changes document between the old manuscript and the new one (you can include this as part of your ‘author’s reply’).

I look forward to seeing the next version of your manuscript which I will not send out for further review, but rather, will make the decision myself, assuming no major items come up in the revised manuscript for which I need outside reviewers to aid me in my decision.

All the best
Gregor Leckebusch

Dear Markus Augenstein, Susanna Mohr, and Michael Kunz!

I am pleased to inform you that the revised version of your manuscript EGUSPHERE-2024-2804 can now be accepted for publication in our journal Natural Hazards and Earth System Sciences (NHESS). Please inform your co-authors of the editorial decision.

You will soon be contacted by the journal publication office for the preparation of the final version of your manuscript. Please respond promptly to the requests of the publication office, as this will condition the time of your publication, and read carefully any copy-editing recommendations that they make. Let me remind you that final publication of your paper on the journal web site is subject to the payment of the appropriate service charges. Also, do not forget that as an open-access journal you can freely distribute your paper once it is published.

I take this opportunity to thank you and your co-authors for having selected Natural Hazards and Earth System Sciences (NHESS) for the publication of your scientific work. I look forward to receiving further contributions to our journal from you and your co-authors.

Sincerely,
Gregor Leckebusch