Validation and Selection of a Representative Subset from the Ensemble of EURO-CORDEX EUR11 Regional Climate Model Outputs for the Czech Republic

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Hi dear authors,

First of all, I congratulate you for a challenging and good study.

I proposed my own questions in the manuscript.

Sincerely,

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Hi

Author Response

Dear reviewer, 
thank you very much for your review of our manuscript. Below you can find our responses to each of your points. 
1. The quality of international databases differs in the set (or the number) of stations that are used in them. Here we have access to all weather stations from the national weather service. We have pre-processed them (in the form of the so-called technical series) so there is no better validation set with higher accuracy for the Czech Republic. 
2. Some parts with the abbreviations were highlighted by you. We are not sure if you indicated to change it, or if it was just marked for your better orientation in the text. We use 2letter abbreviations where the abbreviations seem to be clear. 
3. We removed "we" from the text. 
4. We think that "vice versa" is a part of a common English (it may be found in a vocabulary), similarly e.g. "etc.", even if these words come from Latin. 
5. FAO-56 evapotranspiration requires for its calculation more than only common "climatological elements" like temperature and precipitation, e.g., relative humidity (which is not so common) is required. We think that more details are beyond the scope of this study, so we recommended a reference for further reading about this topic. 
6. The two highlighted parts were modified as well as one name of the subsection marked by you. 
7. The manuscript went through the English correction with the certificate. Besides we found some issues that were corrected, mainly in the discussion part which was compiled from two sources. We will be glad if you will specify other issues that we did not correct. Many thanks in advance. 
 
All added changes are in yellow boxes. Some captions of axes were rotated in the figures.  
Two more citations (10, 28) that we have not noticed before were added. Figure 1 was added. 

On behalf of the authors, yours sincerely, 
Jan Meitner 

 

Reviewer 2 Report

The study introduces a methodology for validating and selecting a set of Regional Climate Models (RCMs) for the European region. This method is based on four validation criteria, namely: reproducibility of circulation patterns, temporal correlations in annual cycles, spatial correlations in long-term means and spatial variability, and comprehensiveness across all meteorological elements. This approach enables the screening of models from an extensive ensemble, identifying those suitable for the Czech Republic and Central European area, and subsequently selecting a smaller subset that retains the uncertainty range of the original ensemble.

Suggested revisions for the paper are as follows:

1. 1. The introduction of the article could incorporate a concise overview of the climate characteristics and changing trends specific to the Czech Republic and Central European region, along with their implications for socioeconomic and ecological environments. Additionally, it would be beneficial to include a geographical map illustrating the study area.
2. 2. The discussion section should be subdivided into distinct thematic segments to enhance the clarity of the paper's structure.
3. 3. The paper should address the influence of data and method uncertainties on the conclusions drawn.
4. 4. The paper should also deliberate on the applicability of the methodology if the size of the study area were to expand or contract.

Author Response

Dear reviewer, 
thank you very much for your review of our manuscript. Below you can find our responses to each of your points. 
1. We added map of Europe with the highlighted Czech Republic. We think that the addition of climate characteristics of the Czech Republic is not needed since the article aimed rather to the methods. Some characteristics of recent climate can be seen in figure 5 (4 in previous version) — green points. 
2. We added subsections in the discussion part. 
3. Thank you for this comment. The quality of international databases differs with the set (or the number) of stations that are used in them. Here we have available all weather stations from the national weather service. We pre-processed them thoroughly so there is no better validation set with higher accuracy for the Czech Republic. Lower accuracy of the reference dataset for validation could only imply higher uncertainty in results and some of the differences between models could disappear. On the other hand, such big problems as the opposite annual cycle in H-CLM will persist. Such an extensive evaluation can be done as a new study. Here we focus on station data mainly due to using station data in our impact studies and as stated before, it is regarded as the best dataset that can be applied. 
4. On whole European domain AC will fail. Spatial variability will be still the correct tool. We added it to the text of the manuscript. Thank you for such an important question. 

All added changes are in yellow boxes. Some captions of axes were rotated in the figures. Two more citations (10, 28) that we did not see before were added. Figure 1 was added. 

On behalf of the authors, yours sincerely, 
Jan Meitner 

 

Reviewer 3 Report

The manuscript is well written and interesting. Anyway, the methodology to select subset of ensemble ignore the dependency among in the study. 

The authors better to consider this in the selection of subset of ensemble. 

Reference: 

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00382-012-1610-y

https://journals.ametsoc.org/view/journals/clim/28/6/jcli-d-14-00364.1.xml

https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/2017JD028026

https://esd.copernicus.org/articles/9/135/2018/

 

There are some English errors, need more improvement

Author Response

Dear reviewer, 
thank you very much for your review of our manuscript. Below you can find our responses to each of your points. 
1. Thank you for focusing as on the articles. We went through them, and we added references to some of them into the manuscript. 
-The first and the fourth article is already part of the review study [8]. 
-The second is very similar to the first one, but it is not in the review study, so we included it among references about weighting. 
- We added a reference to the third article and commented results of it in a new paragraph (in the Discussion part). Thank you very much for it. 
2.  Besides we found some issues that were corrected, mainly in the discussion part which was compiled from two sources. We will be glad if you will specify other issues that we did not correct. Many thanks in advance. 
 
All added changes are in yellow boxes. Some captions of axes were rotated in the figures. Two more citations (10, 28) that we have not noticed before were added. Figure 1 was added. 

On behalf of the authors, yours sincerely, 
Jan Meitner 

 

 

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

The paper has been appropriately modified according to the reviewer's opinion, and I agree to publish the paper

Reviewer 3 Report

I have no further comments