Assessment of the Continuous Extreme Drought Events in Namibia during the Last Decade
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
This paper is focus on the assessment of the continuous extreme drought events over Namibia during the last decade by means of several index and statistical analysis. Despite a big efforts has been clearly made, I have no clear what are the novelties in this work. I would suggest to properly assess the literature about extreme drought events over Namibia and clearly report in the introduction the novelties of the work.
Author Response
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Reviewer 2 Report
The topic of the paper is interesting, but insufficiently presented. My remarks are as follows:
- The aim of the paper has not been properly specified.
- The research area was described too generally. There is lack of information about air temperature and seasonal distribution of precipitation.
- The authors generally described the data they used, they did not indicate what are their advantages and disadvantages in relation to data from traditional meteorological stations.
- Methods were poorly described. In case of SPI it was not indicated for which period of cumulation the calculations were performed and why only for this period of cumulation. Similarly, in the case of using the SVI index. For example, the criteria for determining drought based on SPI and NDVI are presented in Table 1 in the results. In order to better understand the applied research procedure, a methodological scheme should be presented.
- in the results section, the authors provide information about the growing season and present precipitation in different periods. In my opinion, instead of cumulative precipitation it should be sum of precipitation in growing season (IX-IV)
- as a rule SPI <=-1.0 is considered a period of mild drought. Authors do not refer to the references and do not explain why they adopted different criteria than those used so far in the references
- the title of section 3.3 is inappropriate to the content
- the authors did not present a discussion or cite any references.
- references that the authors presented is poor – only 34 items. The authors do not cite the new references, there are a total of 4 references from 2018-2021. This is far too little.
- Insert the outline of the map with southern Africa, sign the neighboring countries of Namibia. Instead of in the legend, it is better to insert captions on the map it will be more readable
- in the caption of fig 1. there is an average NDVI value - for what time?
- line 318 is 500,00 km2 and should be 500,00 km2
- line 322 is ‘800,00 km2’ and should be ‘800,00 km2’
Author Response
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Reviewer 3 Report
water-1398610-peer-review-v1
Title
The Title reflects the paper’s content accurately.
Abstract
The Abstract determines the paper’s content and objectives in a very manifest and complete fashion.
- Introduction
In L56 references should inserted regarding the connection of floods with climate (D. G. Panagoulia and Dimou 1997:D. Panagoulia 2009) which is another important aspect of this study. Otherwise, the Introduction is well referenced as well as both adequate and highly informative.
- Materials and Methods
In Section 2.1 the case study refers to a very large and important area and is well presented and documented.
In Section 2.2 the selection of CHIRPS and the NDVI layer of MOD13A2 as well as the TEOW division of Namibia into six main ecoregions (deserts excluded) is optimal.
In Sections 2.3.1, 2.3.2 and 2.3. the selection of the Mann-Kendall test, of the SPI as the meteorological drought index and Standardized Vegetation Index (SVI) are scientifically sound.
- Results
Exhaustively analyzed.
- Discussion and Conclusions
Precise and firmly based on the previous sections.
References
Panagoulia, D. 2009. “From Low-Flows to Floods under Global Warming.” In EGU General Assembly 2009. Geophysical Research Abstracts Vol. 11, EGU2009-4511, 2009.
Panagoulia, Dionysia G., and George Dimou. 1997. “Sensitivity of Flood Events to Global Climate Change.” Journal of Hydrology 191 (1): 208–22.
Author Response
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Round 2
Reviewer 1 Report
The paper still lack of scientific soundness. It looks more a well written technical paper. What are the novelties?. The authors claims that “Although the extreme drought events occurred in Namibia during last decade had gained broad international attention, few studies carefully evaluated the spatiotemporal dynamic of these events.” What are these studies? Why the authors says that the previous studies have not “carefully evaluated the spatiotemporal dynamic” of droughts. Could they support that statement with proper citations?
The are a lot of citations regarding the importance of droughts in Namibia, and this justify the relevance of the topic, but no citation that supports the novelties of the work.
Author Response
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Reviewer 2 Report
The authors have significantly improved their article. The discussion is at a weak level. The authors did not compare their results with other studies conducted in this area
Technical note
Line 254-261 - adjust the font style to the article
Author Response
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