Analysis of the Effect of Climate Change on the Characteristics of Rainfall in Igeldo-Gipuzkoa (Spain)

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The paper presents an analysis of the long dataset produced by the Igeldo rain gauge to assess possible non-stationarity due to climate change. The authors performed a set of statistical tests at different time scales and evaluated their results. The tests allow to check different aspects of the time series, such as randomness, autocorrelation, existence of trends or lack of homogeneity. They illustrated their work with adequate figures and provided an interesting discussion of the results. The main scientific contribution of the paper is the methodology of analysis. Although the results are of local scope, this analysis could be extended to other locations to test for non-stationarity in rainfall series.

In my opinion, the paper is relevant and deserves publication in Water Journal. The topic is interesting and fits in the scope of the journal, the objectives are clearly defined, previous work is properly presented and acknowledged, the methodology is clearly explained, the results are adequately described and discussed, and the conclusions are useful for many scientists interested in the topic. Overall, the paper is clearly written, well structured, and profusely illustrated with figures.

I congratulate the authors on their good work and encourage them to elaborate further on the added value of their work. I am listing a few suggestions as examples that could be considered - but alternatives could also be proposed by the authors instead.

Strengthen the novelty. The paper would benefit from a clear highlight of things such as: What has not been done before? What are the new methodological developments/ improvements? What is the added value compared with existing literature that will interest a reader not directly involved in the local results? For example, the combination of this suite of tests to check for non-stationarity might be a novelty to highlight.

Extend the interpretation of the results. It would be interesting to develop further the interpretation of some of the results obtained in the analysis. For example, how is it that significant trends and break points were detected only for winter precipitation? Is winter precipitation so small that it does not influence annual precipitation? Is it that the winter trend is compensated by smaller changes in the three other seasons without crossing the trend detection threshold?

From the formal standpoint, the paper is correctly organized and adequately illustrated with tables and figures. However, I noticed frequent grammar and spelling errors. I suggest that the authors have their manuscript proofread by a native English speaker.

Author Response

First of all, I would like to thank your suggestions and comments. They have helped to improve the quality and comprehensibility of the paper.

The answers to the suggestions can be found in the attached file.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

Dear Editor.

I have finished my review on the proposed paper “ANALYSIS OF THE EFFECT OF CLIMATE CHANGE ON THE CHARACTERISTICS OF RAINFALL IN IGELDO-GIPUZKOA (SPAIN)”, water-2324562-peer-review-v1.

 

Summary of the manuscript:

In the proposed paper, the author’s goal is investigate the trend of precipitation time series for one meteorological station, which is located in Igeldo (San Sebastian, Spain), which can be considered representative of the Cantabrian coast, according to the authors. The authors used the Mann-Kendall and Spearman tests to detect and evaluate the trends of the different parameters and the Pettitt’s test to detect the existence of potential changing points. They found that there is no statistically significant trend in the precipitation time series.

 

General review:

1. Generally, the manuscript presents an interesting topic and the specific research seems to include some significant points for the research community of this field.

2. The proposed paper is very well written with very good use of English language. Except some very minor grammatical mistakes and word errors. The author should check again the paper to correct these minor mistakes.

3. The proposed paper is very well structured. It begins with the Introduction with some references that helps the reader to get into the subject immediately. In Introduction there is an effort to provide previous studies with similar scientific content, which took place in the research area and in other countries. Author describes and set very well the scientific problem and how other researchers have approached. At the end of Introduction, authors clearly state the goals of the research. However, I believe that for the specific subject you can enhance the provided literature (see below comments).

4. The methodology is generally very interesting, and I believe that is well explained.

5. The results and the discussion are generally OK. However, there some parts that need revisions (see below comments).

 

Additional points for revision:

In my opinion, the proposed paper could be characterized as a very good research work, complies with aims of WATER. 

Lines 397-402: As the authors stated, the main drawback and limitation of the research is that they analyzed only one rain station. I wonder, the station did not record temperature. It would be interesting to add a trend analysis for the temperature.

Lines 296-302: Here and generally in the paper you should discuss your results using literature from the broader area of Spain. For example, here you can add the following studies (doi.org/10.3390/f13060879, doi.org/10.3390/w14162499 and doi.org/10.3390/su142013380) from other countries (that have addressed that there is no statistically significant decrease or increase in precipitation.

Generally, for RESULTS and DISCUSSION: The Discussion is very weak. Discussion within the context of comparing the results of the paper with other studies, in not exists. I searched the paper, but I did not find references in this section. You should compare your results with previously published studies. I gave some very recent studies to add and begin the searching. Generally, to my knowledge, concerning the annual rainfall, the results of the other studies are ambiguous, showing in some regions stability and in other increase/or decrease. Please, enhance the quality of this sections adding more literature form the broader area of Spain.

 4. Discussion and Conclusions: I think that MDPI does not permit the combination of Discussion and Conclusion sections. Please, separate the sections.

Author Response

I would like to thank your suggestions and comments. They have helped to improve the quality and comprehensibility of the paper.

The answers to the suggestions can be found in the attached file.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 3 Report

This paper is interesting, comprehensive, and adequate. This paper used a 89 yrs precipitation series recorded at the Igeldo weather station in San Sebastian (Gipuzkoa-Spain) to study the behavior and changes in the rainfall regime. Different characteristics related to precipitation regime (maximum precipitation intensities, and several indices such as climate change precipitation, Gini index, annual and seasonal precipitation anomalies) were analysed and trends were studied, in order to evaluate the effect of climate change on the rainfall regime in this area.

Strengths – Wide data set, comprising a very long period of time (89 years), several parameters. Several tests were performed; return point; correlation; Mann-Kendall and Spearman and the Pettitt tests.

 Weakness ­– This study was set at local level, limited to a specific weather station in Igeldo, S.Sebastian.

 Abstract – the information given is adequate and concise.

1. Introduction – The aim of paper is adequately exploited. Adequate and up to date references.

2. Materials and Methods – Adequate and informative

 Figure 1 - caption should be rewritten.

 Line 167 – what is WMO? World Meteorological Organization? State it at line 162. This information is repeated in lines 228/229

3. Results - Adequate and well documented by figures and tables.

 Captions for table 3 in Spanish ( v = N-2 grados de libertad y α = 5%). No bold values are highlighted in Table 3.

 Figure 5 – State what are each index in caption for figures. Or at least state that they are described in Table 2.

 4. Discussion and Conclusions – Adequate.

 Therefore in my opinion this paper should be accepted with minor revision.

Author Response

I would like to thank your suggestions and comments. They have helped to improve the quality and comprehensibility of the paper.

Las contestaciones a las sugerencias las hago en el archivo adjunto

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

Dear authors.

Thank you very much for  the provided responses. You have addressed all my comments with a plausible manner. The work in Discussion in now very qualitatively. I have some minor comments to add. I wonder why the title of the paper is in capital letters? You have to check if this is in accordance to MDPI rules. In figure 1 you have to add some kind of scale bar.