Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The interesting results were found by the article on Regional Climate Change Adaptation: Practice, Path, and Prospect. In particular, it is found that (1) regional climate change perditions provides a decision-making basis; (2) develop a hot map of climate change to assess regional climate vulnerability; (3) take advantage of decision-making and implementation by actively promoting horizontal and vertical cooperation in multi-level governance.

It is according to the scope of the journal. However, the following points must have to address before a decision for final publication. 

In the first sentence of the introduction, the given studies [2-5] are old. Therefore, I recommend replacing them with the latest literature [1,2,3] as given below. 

[1] Extreme weather events risk to crop-production and the adaptation of innovative management strategies to mitigate the risk: A retrospective survey of rural Punjab, Pakistan

[2] Understanding farmers’ intention and willingness to install renewable energy technology: A solution to reduce the environmental emissions of agriculture

[3] Estimating smart energy inputs packages using hybrid optimisation technique to mitigate environmental emissions of commercial fish farms

…… and that the intensity and frequency of future extreme climate events are expected to increase, enhanced by using fossil fuels. Therefore, the adoption of climate change and smart agricultural strategies are necessary to mitigate the damages due to climate change [2 -5].”

*The above sentence should add in the introduction with given studies [1,2,3]. 

Section 1.1. At the endpoint (3), I recommend adding the given sentence “It is necessary to focus on the right projection of extreme weather events to adopt adoptions strategies timely to mitigate the negative impacts of climate change [4,5].” 

[4] Evaluation and projection of precipitation in Pakistan using the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 6 model simulations.

[5] Spatiotemporal Analysis of Meteorological and Hydrological Droughts and Their Propagations. 

I recommend adding a theoretical framework to the revised article. 

Moreover, the limitations of the study should be added to the article.

Author Response

Response to Reviewer 1

 

Dear Reviewer,

Thanks for your comments on our manuscript entitled “Regional Climate Change Adaptation: Practice, Path and Prospect” (ID: climate-2342510). All these comments were valuable and helpful for improving the quality of our manuscript. According to these comments, we have tried our best to revise our manuscript and respond to the questions. Attached please find the revised version with changes marked, and all the point-by-point responses to these comments are as follows:

Point 1:

In the first sentence of the introduction, the given studies [2-5] are old. Therefore, I recommend replacing them with the latest literature [1,2,3] as given below. 

[1] Extreme weather events risk to crop-production and the adaptation of innovative management strategies to mitigate the risk: A retrospective survey of rural Punjab, Pakistan

[2] Understanding farmers’ intention and willingness to install renewable energy technology: A solution to reduce the environmental emissions of agriculture

[3] Estimating smart energy inputs packages using hybrid optimisation technique to mitigate environmental emissions of commercial fish farms

…… and that the intensity and frequency of future extreme climate events are expected to increase, enhanced by using fossil fuels. Therefore, the adoption of climate change and smart agricultural strategies are necessary to mitigate the damages due to climate change [2 -5].”

*The above sentence should add in the introduction with given studies [1,2,3]. 

Response 1:

We have added recommended references to ref11-13.

Point 2:

Section 1.1. At the endpoint (3), I recommend adding the given sentence “It is necessary to focus on the right projection of extreme weather events to adopt adoptions strategies timely to mitigate the negative impacts of climate change [4,5].” 

[4] Evaluation and projection of precipitation in Pakistan using the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 6 model simulations.

[5] Spatiotemporal Analysis of Meteorological and Hydrological Droughts and Their Propagations. 

Response 2:

We have supplemented and added citations, as detailed in "4.1.1 Trade and financial flows", references [47-48].

Extreme weather events expose regional resource development and international trade flows to frequent shocks of uncertainty. 2010 saw the worst flooding in 50 years in eastern Australia, which significantly reduced mining operations and damaged transport networks, resulting in a significant drop in coking coal exports [46]. Unfortunately, the intensity and frequency of extreme climate events are expected to increase in the future, enhanced by the use of fossil fuels [47,48].

Point 3:

I recommend adding a theoretical framework to the revised article.

Response 3:

Based on the comments, we take five typical cases as the research objects and adopt a multi-case comparative research method to discuss regional climate change adaptation based on the Pressure-State-Response (PSR) framework. It found that: (1) regional climate change adaptation faces significant pressure from cross-regional flows of finance, population and species under climate change; (2) climate change hotspot maps based on climate change projections show regional climate vulnerability; (3) response for regional climate change adaptation require active promotion of multi-level governance with horizontal and vertical cooperation.

Point 4:

Moreover, the limitations of the study should be added to the article.

Response 4:

The limitations of this paper are centred on the research methodology of multiple case studies, as detailed in "5.1. Conclusions and limitations".

While this paper validates and enriches the regional climate change adaptation under the PSR model, the case study approach still has several limitations:

• The research process is susceptible to the ideas of the researcher and ignores some of the important information.
• It is hard to accurately measure the degree of interaction between the elements.
• In terms of the multi-case comparison, while emphasizing typicality and specificity, the cases also lacks in-depth exploration In addition, although the cases were chosen to be as representative as possible, the findings are, after all, based on only five typical regions, and whether the conclusions are applicable to the climate change adaptation in other regions still needs to be further verified by more studies.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments on the manuscript “Regional Climate Change Adaptation: Practice, Path and Prospect” by Xu Mengzhi *, Li Jixia and Luan Shixin

 

Major issues:

1. There are many statements not backed up by the appropriate references. It is mandatory to include those references to make this work more robust.

2. The authors should improve the writing quality of the manuscript. In many cases, there are typographical errors, including upper-case letters where they are not necessary and vice-versa.

3. The caption of all figures is extremely succinct and not comprehensive enough to understand the figures without referring to the main text. I urge the authors to include details in all figure captions.

4. The writing of the abstract should be improved. It is not clear the main idea the authors want the reader to understand. For example, “In the future, regional climate 17 adaptation will focus on inter-regional climate justice, regional climate change adaptation…” I don’t think that this will necessarily happen in the future. I would replace will by something like should.

 

Minor issues:

L23. Reconstructions? Many global mean temperature records are indeed made from observations, not reconstructed temperatures.

L23-42. It is unclear in which section is this paragraph.

L26. Delete “Interregional”

L44-50. Many of these statements should be backed up by references. For example, “Factors such as finance, population and species are sensitive to climate change and extreme weather events.” How do the authors know this? How sensitive are these factors?

L48. What the authors mean by “Cross-regional Phenomena”. I would add examples to clarify this further.

L52-53. Again, a strong statement without any reference backing it up. “Regional climate change alters international trade patterns and financial flows by affecting the geography and investment climate.”

L77-78. I would not use hurricane Katrina as an example here. Detection and attribution studies of specific events like hurricane Katrina, suggest an anthropogenic contribution to its severity, but it is not entirely caused by climate change. Therefore, people forced to migrate from these events are not only caused by climate change. I would include other examples, such as trends in aridity or more extreme weather events in general.

L90. Again, a strong statement without the appropriate reference: “A clear impact of climate change is the natural migration of ecosystems and species.”

L95. “...are the most vulnerable…”

L101. “or deeper in the oceans.”

L106-107. “Africa, Europe, Asia, Australia, North America, Central and South America, Polar Regions, Small Islands and the Ocaen (typo: Ocean).” Also, Figure 1 should be referred to here. 

Figure 1. By “Polar Regions” the authors only show Antarctica, which is wrong. Where are the Boreal Polar regions? Also, North and Central America are together in this map. Therefore, there is no need to mention “Central and South America.”

Figure 1. The caption of this figure does not describe the details of it, but only shows the source. I believe that a good figure caption should be self-explanatory without the need of reading the details in the main text. Even though we may know each continent, that might not be true to everyone. Therefore, adding a legend or at least the names of each continent would be wise.

L118. Why not use the formal term: “Small Island Developing States (SIDS)”? Some references the authors may see for this section are:

1. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10113-018-1331-9

2. https://www.nature.com/articles/nclimate2987

3. https://www.nature.com/articles/nclimate3171

4. https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/2018GL079408   

L127-130. “On the one hand, Small Islands are particularly vulnerable to sea-level rise (R), ocean warming (R), ocean acidification (R) and extreme weather events (R) due to their small land area (R), low elevation (R) and the concentration of human communities (R)  and infrastructure in coastal areas (R) .” Where are the references to back up this statement?  All the “(R)" I added mean that at least one reference should be added.

L129. “low elevation,...” Not all SIDS have this problem.

L148. Flood resilience in Europe…

 

Author Response

Response to Reviewer 2

 

Dear Reviewer,

Thanks for your comments on our manuscript entitled “Regional Climate Change Adaptation: Practice, Path and Prospect” (ID: climate-2342510). All these comments were valuable and helpful for improving the quality of our manuscript. According to these comments, we have tried our best to revise our manuscript and respond to the questions. Attached please find the revised version with changes marked, and all the point-by-point responses to these comments are as follows:

Major issues

Point 1:

There are many statements not backed up by the appropriate references. It is mandatory to include those references to make this work more robust.

Response 1:

In response to the reviewers' comments, we have combed the references throughout the text to make this work more robust.

Point 2:

The authors should improve the writing quality of the manuscript. In many cases, there are typographical errors, including upper-case letters where they are not necessary and vice-versa.

Response 2:

Thanks to the reviewers' comments, we checked the full text for writing conventions and typography.

Point 3:

The caption of all figures is extremely succinct and not comprehensive enough to understand the figures without referring to the main text. I urge the authors to include details in all figure captions.

Response 3:

Thanks for your suggestions.

Firstly, we have reorganized the headings at all levels throughout the text to fully reflect the logic of the writing. The revised outline is as follows:

1. Introduction
2. Research Design
3. Case Description

3.1. Community-based adaptation in SIDS

3.2. Enhancing flood resilience in Europe

3.3 Promotion of weather index insurance in Africa

3.4. Traditional knowledge -based adaptation in Polar Regions

3.5. Global shared decision-making in the Ocean

4. Results

4.1. Pressure: understanding the impact of climate change on ESE systems

4.1.1 Trade and financial flows

4.1.2. Population migration

4.1.3. Ecosystems and species migration

4.2. State: identify climate change hotspots based on climate change predictions

4.2.1. Predicting regional climate change

4.2.2. Mapping climate change hotspots to assess regional vulnerability

4.3. Response: multi-level governance

5. Conclusions and Prospect

5.1. Conclusions and limitations

5.2. Prospect

At the same time, we have modified the title of the figure and added a description as follows:

• 1 Research flowchart
• 2 Typical cases of regional climate change adaptation around the world

World map source: “2014: Regional context. In: Climate Change 2014: Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerability. Part B: Regional Aspects. Contribution of Working Group II to the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change”

Note: According to the Fifth Assessment Report of the IPCC, Figure 1 divides the world into 9 major regions. This article selects five typical cases for comparative analysis of regional climate adaptation, namely SIDS (community-based adaptation), Europe (enhancing flood resilience), Africa (weather index insurance), Polar Regions (traditional knowledge -based adaptation) and the Ocean (global shared decision-making).

• 3 Regional climate change adaptation based on the PSR mode
• 4 Application process of downscaling method in regional climate change

Note: taking the application of downscaling method in ecological forecasting as an example, firstly, Determine the forecast volume and area based on regional and large-scale natural and social information; Secondly, the historical data of the forecast variables are coupled to summarize the law of their development trend, and the inter-action between variables is considered to construct the statistical function relationship between the forecast fac-tors and the variables; Thirdly, the accurate forecast results are obtained through the detection and function correction of the digital outputs, and finally, the decision-making and planning of regional climate change adaptation are carried out on the basis of the results, such as drawing climate change hotspots map.

• 5 Climate adaptation decision-making in various fields under different scales

Note: taking the environmental field as an example, under the vertical top-down scale, the decision-making scope, the scope of authority and decision-making subject are: Global- policy negotiations, development aid (Convention on Biological Diversity, CBD); Transnational-regional development, capacity building (Mekong River Commission, MRC; National-national adaptation plan, national communication, legal regulation (ministries/ governments); Subnational-space planning, infrastructure support (states/provinces/cities); Local-local planning, behavioral participation (producers/consumers).

Point 4:

The writing of the abstract should be improved. It is not clear the main idea the authors want the reader to understand. For example, “In the future, regional climate 17 adaptation will focus on inter-regional climate justice, regional climate change adaptation…” I don’t think that this will necessarily happen in the future. I would replace will by something like should.

Response 4:

We fully agree with the reviewer's comments and have made substitutions as suggested. Also, the abstract section was rechecked. The revised summary is as follows：

Abstract: Regional climate change is affected by global warming, large-scale inter-regional circulation, and land use/cover. As a result of different ecological, economic, and social conditions, climate adaptation actions vary from region to region, including community-based adaptation in small island developing states, enhancing flood resilience in Europe, weather index insurance promotion in Africa, climate change adaptation based on traditional knowledge in Polar Regions, and global joint decision-making in terms of regional issues of Ocean. This paper takes the above five typical cases as the research objects, and the multi-case comparative research method is adopted to discuss regional climate change adaptation based on the pressure-state-response framework. It found that: (1) regional climate change adaptation faces significant pressure from cross-regional flows of finance, population and species under climate change; (2) climate change hotspot maps based on climate change projections show regional climate vulnerability; (3) response for regional climate change adaptation require active promotion of multi-level governance with horizontal and vertical cooperation. In the future, regional climate change adaptation should focus on inter-regional climate justice and equality, regional climate change adaptation pathways optimization, and how to effectively learn from typical regional climate adaptation cases.

Minor issues

Point 1:

L23. Reconstructions? Many global mean temperature records are indeed made from observations, not reconstructed temperatures.L23.

Response 1:

The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) process agreed in Paris to limit global surface temperature rise to “well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels.” But what period is preindustrial? Hawkins et al. estimate the change in global average temperature since pre-industrial using a range of approaches based on observations, radiative forcings, global climate model simulations and proxy evidence,and found that 2015 was likely the first year in which global average temperature was more than 1 C above pre-industrial levels [1].

We cites this research [1] in order to highlight the dramatic changes in climate before and after industrialisation.

[1] Hawkins, E.; Ortega, P.; Suckling, E.; Schurer, A.; Hegerl, G.; Jones, P.; Joshi, M.; Osborn, T.J.; Masson-Delmotte, V.; Mignot, J.; et al. Estimating Changes in Global Temperature since the Preindustrial Period. Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society 2017, 98, 1841–1856, doi:10.1175/BAMS-D-16-0007.1.

Point 2:

L23-42. It is unclear in which section is this paragraph.L23-42.

Response 2:

We have reorganized the outline of the paper and grouped this section under "1. Introduction".

Point 3:

L26. Delete “Interregional”

Response 3:

We fully agree with the reviewers' comments and have made revisions.

Point 4:

L44-50. Many of these statements should be backed up by references. For example, “Factors such as finance, population and species are sensitive to climate change and extreme weather events.” How do the authors know this? How sensitive are these factors?

Response 4:

We give the statements at the beginning of “4.1. Pressure: the impact of climate change on Economic-social-ecological systems”, and illustrate it in terms of finance, population and species, supported by relevant references including [4,41-54].

Point 5:

L48. What the authors mean by “Cross-regional Phenomena”. I would add examples to clarify this further.

Response 5:

As above, the cross-regional phenomenon in this paper refers to the cross-regional movement of factors such as finance, population and species under climate change, as explained in "4.1.1 - 4.1.3" for additional examples.

Point 6:

L52-53. Again, a strong statement without any reference backing it up. “Regional climate change alters international trade patterns and financial flows by affecting the geography and investment climate.”

Response 6:

Ibid., we base the judgment on three arguments: ①Climate change alters trade routes. ②Climate change changes the investment environment and increases the vulnerability of less developed regions. ③Extreme weather events expose regional resource development and international trade flows to frequent shocks of uncertainty. See “4.1.1 Trade and financial flows” for details.

Point 7:

L77-78. I would not use hurricane Katrina as an example here. Detection and attribution studies of specific events like hurricane Katrina, suggest an anthropogenic contribution to its severity, but it is not entirely caused by climate change. Therefore, people forced to migrate from these events are not only caused by climate change. I would include other examples, such as trends in aridity or more extreme weather events in general.

Response 7:

As suggested, we have replaced the examples with floods and droughts to illustrate the impact of extreme weather events on population migration. The details are as follows:

Extreme climate events, for example, the changing flood patterns in the Mekong River Delta region are closely linked to migration, while drought and desertification in Niger have led to internal population movements [49].

Point 8:

L90. Again, a strong statement without the appropriate reference: “A clear impact of climate change is the natural migration of ecosystems and species.”

Response 8:

We base this judgment on two arguments: ①climate change displaces biogeographic regions, which in turn leads to ecosystem migration and functional changes. ②widespread climate warming is causing species to migrate to higher latitudes, higher elevations, or deeper in the ocean. All above are well supported by the literature.

Point 19:

L95. “...are the most vulnerable…”

Response 9:

We rephrased the sentence to express our viewpoints more clearly. The details are as follows:

The ecological functions of tundra, boreal forests, mountains, Mediterranean ecosystems, and tropical rainforests are extremely vulnerable to climate change [54].

Point 10:

L101. “or deeper in the oceans.”

Response 10:

We rephrased the sentence to express our viewpoints more clearly. The details are as follows:

widespread climate warming is causing species to migrate to higher latitudes, higher elevations, or deeper in the ocean [56].

Point 11:

L106-107. “Africa, Europe, Asia, Australia, North America, Central and South America, Polar Regions, Small Islands and the Ocaen (typo: Ocean).” Also, Figure 1 should be referred to here. 

Response 11:

Thanks for the heads up, we fixed the spelling. In addition, Figure 1 refers to the five typical cases selected for this paper, not the nine regions delineated by the IPCC. Therefore, Figure 1 is not mentioned here.

Point 12:

Figure 1. By “Polar Regions” the authors only show Antarctica, which is wrong. Where are the Boreal Polar regions? Also, North and Central America are together in this map. Therefore, there is no need to mention “Central and South America.”

Response 12:

We have made the following changes:

Firstly, the polar regions were incorrectly labelled, which we have corrected, as shown in Figure 1.

Secondly, Figure 1 refers to the five typical cases selected for this paper, not the nine regions classified by the IPCC. We have amended Figure 1 by clearly labelling the nine regions, as well as the five typical regions.

Point 13:

Figure 1. The caption of this figure does not describe the details of it, but only shows the source. I believe that a good figure caption should be self-explanatory without the need of reading the details in the main text. Even though we may know each continent, that might not be true to everyone. Therefore, adding a legend or at least the names of each continent would be wise.

Response 13:

We have labelled the nine regional divisions of Figure 1 and added notes as follows:

Note: According to the Fifth Assessment Report of the IPCC, Figure 1 divides the world into 9 major regions. This article selects five typical cases for comparative analysis of regional climate adaptation, namely SIDS (community-based adaptation), Europe (enhancing flood resilience), Africa (weather index insurance), Polar Regions (traditional knowledge -based adaptation) and the Ocean (global shared decision-making).

Point 14:

L118. Why not use the formal term: “Small Island Developing States (SIDS)”? Some references the authors may see for this section are:L118.

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10113-018-1331-9

https://www.nature.com/articles/nclimate2987

https://www.nature.com/articles/nclimate3171

https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/2018GL079408   

Response 14:

Thanks to the reviewer's suggestion, we have replaced Small Islands with Small Island Developing States (SIDS).

Point 15:

L127-130. “On the one hand, Small Islands are particularly vulnerable to sea-level rise (R), ocean warming (R), ocean acidification (R) and extreme weather events (R) due to their small land area (R), low elevation (R) and the concentration of human communities (R)  and infrastructure in coastal areas (R) .” Where are the references to back up this statement?  All the “(R)" I added mean that at least one reference should be added.L127-130. "

Response 15:

This judgement is derived from IPCC2014, to which we have added references as follows.

• Stocker, T.F.; Qin, D.; Plattner, G.K.; Tignor, M.M.; Allen, S.K.; Boschung, J.; Nauels, A.; Xia, Y.; Bex, V.; Midgley, P.M. IPCC, 2013: Climate Change 2013: The Physical Science Basis. Contribution of Working Group I to the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change; Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, United Kingdom and New York, NY, USA, 2014; ISBN 978-1-107-41532-4.

Point 16:

L129. “low elevation,...” Not all SIDS have this problem.

Response 16:

We have rewritten the expression to convey our viewpoints more clearly. It reads as follows:

many SIDS are particularly vulnerable to sea-level rise, ocean warming, ocean acidification and extreme weather events due to small land area, low elevation and the concentration of human communities and infrastructure in coastal areas.

Point 17:

L148. Flood resilience in Europe…

Response 17:

We rephrased the sentence to express our viewpoints more clearly. The details are as follows:

“3.2. Enhancing flood resilience in Europe”

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 3 Report

1. The reference format is wrong. Most of them are shown as ^[1], and some of them are shown as [⁹] or [13], or ^[2_5]. Please correct the reference format.

2. In the abstract, the authors give the statement “Climate change adaptation on a regional scale has some common characteristics: (1) regional climate change predictions provide a decision-making basis; (2) develop a hot map of climate change to assess regional climate vulnerability; (3) take advantage of decision making and implementation by actively promoting horizontal and vertical cooperation in multi-level governance.” For the first point, the authors do not give details on how these prediction models work, how the accuracy of these models is, and how the decision-making is based on model predictions in section 3.1. Please also add related references.

3. It is better to add a flowchart to represent the paper structure and section relationship.

4. In lines 150-151, “more than 200 flood events in Europe from 2006-2013 caused a total of €52 billion in damage ^[32]." Whenever begin a sentence, please capitalize the first letter of the first word. Besides this, English writing needs to be improved, please check the whole paper. 

Author Response

Response to Reviewer 3

 

Dear Reviewer,

Thanks for your comments on our manuscript entitled “Regional Climate Change Adaptation: Practice, Path and Prospect” (ID: climate-2342510). All these comments were valuable and helpful for improving the quality of our manuscript. According to these comments, we have tried our best to revise our manuscript and respond to the questions. Attached please find the revised version with changes marked, and all the point-by-point responses to these comments are as follows:

Point 1:

The reference format is wrong. Most of them are shown as ^[1], and some of them are shown as [⁹] or [13], or ^[2_5]. Please correct the reference format.

Response 1:

We have revised the citation and formatting of references in full.

Point 2:

In the abstract, the authors give the statement “Climate change adaptation on a regional scale has some common characteristics: (1) regional climate change predictions provide a decision-making basis; (2) develop a hot map of climate change to assess regional climate vulnerability; (3) take advantage of decision making and implementation by actively promoting horizontal and vertical cooperation in multi-level governance.” For the first point, the authors do not give details on how these prediction models work, how the accuracy of these models is, and how the decision-making is based on model predictions in section 3.1. Please also add related references.

Response 2:

Based on the comments, we have added the application process of the downscaling model, which is detailed in Figure 4:

               

Fig. 4 Application process of downscaling method in regional climate change

Note: taking the application of downscaling method in ecological forecasting as an example, firstly, Determine the forecast volume and area based on regional and large-scale natural and social information; Secondly, the historical data of the forecast variables are coupled to summarize the law of their development trend, and the interaction between variables is considered to construct the statistical function relationship between the forecast factors and the variables; Thirdly, the accurate forecast results are obtained through the detection and function correction of the digital outputs, and finally, the decision-making and planning of regional climate change adaptation are carried out on the basis of the results, such as drawing climate change hotspots map.

Point 3:

It is better to add a flowchart to represent the paper structure and section relationship.

Response 3:

We added a research flowchart to represent the paper structure and section relationship, see Figure 1:

Fig. 1 Research flowchart

Point 4:

In lines 150-151, “more than 200 flood events in Europe from 2006-2013 caused a total of €52 billion in damage [32]." Whenever begin a sentence, please capitalize the first letter of the first word. Besides this, English writing needs to be improved, please check the whole paper.

Response 4:

Thanks to the reviewers' comments, we checked the full text for writing conventions and typography.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Satisfied with revision, have no further questions.

Reviewer 3 Report

The authors have solved all of my comments.