Emerging Anthropogenic Influences on the Southcentral Alaska Temperature and Precipitation Extremes and Related Fires in 2019

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Overall, the authors have presented interesting results from a study about a topic that is relevant for fire prevention and management. The content of the manuscript is pertinent for both the scientific community and the fire managers.

Some suggestions and comments to improve the current content of the manuscript are as follows:

Abstract: the aim of the paper should be clarified.

Keywords: I think that “Alaska” is included in the title.  I would change this word to another keyword. It can also be removed.

Lines 57 and 66. What are “strong winds”? What is a strong wind speed in the Southcentral Alaska?

Figures 6 and 8. What are “temperature Climo” and “Climatology” trends?  Are they a “typical meteorological year (TMY)”?

Lines 209-216. I think that these lines should be moved to “Data and methods” section.

Lines 265-267. This finding is similar to other studies. It could be discussed.

Results and Discussion. I think that a final paragraph about the importance and application of this study to fire prevention should be included in this section. This point is essential for managers according to their limited economic resources. Figure4 discussion can also include in this paragraph (large fire occurrence can promote a larger period of suppression resources and a high budget).

Thank you for the opportunity to review this paper

Author Response

Reviewer 1

The authors thank you for taking the time to review our paper and for making suggestions that have improved the manuscript.

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Overall, the authors have presented interesting results from a study about a topic that is relevant for fire prevention and management. The content of the manuscript is pertinent for both the scientific community and the fire managers.

Some suggestions and comments to improve the current content of the manuscript are as follows:

1. Abstract: the aim of the paper should be clarified.

The abstract has been edited to be more direct about the purpose of our study.  Lines 28-30 now explicitly state the study’s main goals.

2. Keywords: I think that “Alaska” is included in the title.  I would change this word to another keyword. It can also be removed.

We are replaced ‘Alaska’ in the keywords with ‘drought’.

3. Lines 57 and 66. What are “strong winds”? What is a strong wind speed in the Southcentral Alaska?

Based on observation sites around the Susitna Valley, wind speeds peaked between 25 and 30 mph. We have now added these numbers in SI units (11-13 m/s) in brackets to provide concrete information.

4. Figures 6 and 8. What are “temperature Climo” and “Climatology” trends?  Are they a “typical meteorological year (TMY)”?

Figure 6 shows the daily 2019 2-m temperature from April to September and a long-term climatology of temperature obtained from averaging daily values over the 1994-2019 period. Fig 6 also shows cumulative precipitation starting with April 1 2019 and adding each daily precipitation value up until September 30, 2019. The climatology is the sum starting on 1 April of the daily averaged precipitation over the 1994-2019 period. There are no trends in this plot.

Reviewer 2 commented on Figure 8 so we have added additional text to clarify the definition of climatological BUI.

5. Lines 209-216. I think that these lines should be moved to “Data and methods” section.

This text has been moved to section 2.

6. Lines 265-267. This finding is similar to other studies. It could be discussed.

We have included a recent paper (Landrum and Holland 2020) that shows the consistency of our result with other studies of future trends in the Arctic, specifically with regard to the greater strength and earlier emergence of the temperature signal compared to the precipitation signal. This result of Landrum and Holland, which is also apparent in broader assessments such as those of the IPCC, is consistent with our finding that the temperature effects dominate precipitation effects on future changes in wildfire risk. Thanks for the suggestion.

7. Results and Discussion. I think that a final paragraph about the importance and application of this study to fire prevention should be included in this section. This point is essential for managers according to their limited economic resources. Figure4 discussion can also include in this paragraph (large fire occurrence can promote a larger period of suppression resources and a high budget).

Based on comments from both reviewers, we have written a paragraph at the end which includes ideas about the actionable items from this study for fire managers and communities. This was missing in our submitted paper and we thank the reviewers for this suggestion.

Reviewer 2 Report

Specific comments and recommendations

Please make sure all dash, font size, space, a hyphen, en dash, and capital words would be appropriate throughout the manuscript.

Please make sure the font size in all figures.

Line 50: Sorry, I cannot see SWAN lake in figure 1.

Line 61: The quality of figure 2 is very low. 

Line 64: What kind of businesses?

Line 71-72: Please re-write the sentences.

Line 120: The quality of figure 5 is very low. Please reproduce this figure.

Line 134: The database and methods should be separated. Lots of ideas are merging.

Line 189: Results and discussions should be separated. Lots of ideas are merging.

Line 233: "Climatology" can be described more specifically for better understanding in the figure (8) caption.

The presented form of the manuscript is still weak to address the emerging anthropogenic influences on Southcentral Alaska, i.e., human health, livelihood security, and tourism activities affected by wildfire. The study area can be more describe regarding population density.

Author Response

Reviewer 2

 Please find our responses in blue.

The authors thank you for taking the time to review our paper and for making suggestions that have improved the manuscript.

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Specific comments and recommendations

1. Please make sure all dash, font size, space, a hyphen, en dash, and capital words would be appropriate throughout the manuscript.

• Hyphens have been replaced by proper en dashes or minus signs or words as appropriate to adhere to standard punctuation rules.
• Double spaces have been removed.
• Formatting was checked for the manuscript to align with the Style Panes which would make fonts consistent.
• We have checked the capitalizations of geographic locations.

2. Please make sure the font size in all figures.

We increased the size of Fig 6 so the fonts are more readable.

3. Line 50: Sorry, I cannot see SWAN lake in figure 1.

Swan Lake is the large burned area shown in red in the piece of Figure 1, shown below. We avoided including an arrow-like we did for the other fires since they were very small and Swan Lake was big.

4. Line 61: The quality of figure 2 is very low. 

We have replaced the figure with the original high-resolution version. We must have reduced the resolution when preparing the manuscript.

5. Line 64: What kind of businesses?

Businesses are mainly those that depend on tourism, such as food sellers, fishing guides, gasoline, and souvenirs. These businesses make the most of their annual income during the summer tourist months. We have expanded this sentence to provide concrete examples.

1. Line 71-72: Please re-write the sentences.

We have rewritten the sentence to improve clarity.

‘Ash pits are very difficult to see so they resulted in numerous serious burns to firefighters [5].’

8. Line 120: The quality of figure 5 is very low. Please reproduce this figure.

We have replaced these panels from the web-based products that are not available at high resolution to our own plots. The resolution should be acceptable now. Note: these plots were made with updated data from NCEI and now the climate divisions surrounding Cook Inlet were only second driest in 2019 and show up under the ‘Much Below average’ compared to Record Driest in the previous version of the plot.

9. Line 134: The database and methods should be separated. Lots of ideas are merging.

We have rearranged the text to separate the data and methods sections as suggested.

10. Line 189: Results and discussions should be separated. Lots of ideas are merging.

The results and discussion have been split with the discussion consisting of Figures 13-15 and associated text.  

11. Line 233: "Climatology" can be described more specifically for better understanding in the figure (8) caption.

We have expanded the text in the caption of figure 8 to add clarity: ‘The climatology (thick grey line) is calculated by averaging daily BUI over the 1979–2019 period.’

12. The presented form of the manuscript is still weak to address the emerging anthropogenic influences on Southcentral Alaska, i.e., human health, livelihood security, and tourism activities affected by wildfire. The study area can be more describe regarding population density.

Based on this suggestion to better motivate the relevance of this research, we have included population numbers to highlight that Southcentral Alaska is where most of the population resides. We also point out that Lines 93–117 specifically address the impacts of the 2019 wildfire.  Our finding that wildfire risk will increase in the future implies that such impacts will also increase in the future.

Also, as noted above, based on comments from both reviewers, we have added a new paragraph at the end in which we discuss this study’s implications and actionable ideas for fire managers and communities.