PCLM-D-22-00005

Challenges in reanalysis products to assess extreme weather impacts on yield underestimate drought: study case in northern Europe.

PLOS Climate

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Srivatsan V Raghavan, PhD

Academic Editor

PLOS Climate

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Reviewers' comments:

Reviewer's Responses to Questions

Comments to the Author

1. Does this manuscript meet PLOS Climate’s publication criteria? Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions? The manuscript must describe methodologically and ethically rigorous research with conclusions that are appropriately drawn based on the data presented.

Reviewer #1: Partly

Reviewer #2: Yes

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2. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously?

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: No

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3. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available (please refer to the Data Availability Statement at the start of the manuscript PDF file)?

The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception. The data should be provided as part of the manuscript or its supporting information, or deposited to a public repository. For example, in addition to summary statistics, the data points behind means, medians and variance measures should be available. If there are restrictions on publicly sharing data—e.g. participant privacy or use of data from a third party—those must be specified.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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4. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English?

PLOS Climate does not copyedit accepted manuscripts, so the language in submitted articles must be clear, correct, and unambiguous. Any typographical or grammatical errors should be corrected at revision, so please note any specific errors here.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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5. Review Comments to the Author

Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters)

Reviewer #1: Based on a meteorological station at Ultuna in Sweden, this study evaluates four reanalysis products in the maximum and minimum temperature and precipitation, which is closely linked with the crop yield. The results found that the reanalysis products underestimate of long dry spells.

Major comments:

1. This study only used one station as the observed true values, which can not represent northern Europe as well as the general performance of the reanalysis products. It had better to use more extensive observed stations if possible. So this paper is not able to give enough evidence to support what the title said.

2. Figure 1 shows the bias of the time series. The probability distribution of the bias can be used to clearly reflect the conclusion.

3. This study needs more quantified metrics to evaluate the mentioned variables to show the biases in detail.

4. The quality of the pictures is poor and needs to be further improved greatly.

Reviewer #2: General comments

Overall, the paper seems reasonable to be published. However, the authors must perform additional analyses in order to strengthen the cohesiveness of the study. The title appears to be overpromising on “assessing extreme weather impacts on yield” while the overall analysis only shows evaluation of RPs in Sweden without discussing the impacts on crop yields.

Major comments:

1. The objective of this study is not clear whether this study analyses meteorological or agricultural drought. The results presented were derived from precipitation and temperature datasets which focuses mainly on meteorological drought. There is a delayed response (or lag effect) of rainfall deficit (which can contribute to meteorological drought) to the occurrence of agricultural drought. The background of the study focuses on the latter. Thus, meteorological drought does not always coincide with agricultural drought. There are many contributing factors in agricultural droughts e.g. soil moisture, evapotranspiration. The authors need to establish comprehensive results on these agricultural parameters.

2. While the correlation coefficients among RPs generally showed a good coherence with the observations, it is also good to see the results of some simple statistical metrics such as bias, MAE, RMSE. This way, the authors can quantitatively evaluate the RPs objectively. Bias errors are presented in Figure 1 but not further discussed. Trends analysis of precipitation can be a valuable addition to the results.

3. I suggest to revise the abstract and specify the good and bad RPs based on the evaluation. Regarding to the above comments, conclusions should also be revised to improve the conciseness of this paper.

4. Include in the methodology the location name, geographical coordinate and elevation of the weather station used as observation.

5. Include in the methodology the equations used.

6. The inclusion of the maximum and minimum temperature needs to be checked. How is it related to meteorological/agricultural drought? This should also be discussed briefly in the Introduction.

7. Line 116-117: this statement should be supported by a more comprehensive analysis not just by using CCC. I suggest to calculate different statistical metrics such as bias, MAE, RMSE for precipitation and temperature. Also, consider calculating the standard precipitation index (SPI) which is used to monitor drought conditions on a variety of time scales.

8. All figures, especially Figure 1, need to be printed in a higher-resolution image.

9. Figure 3: The number of observed dry days is represented well by the RPs but the occurrence of wet days is significantly overestimated. Do the authors think horizontal resolution of the RPs plays a significant role on this? Further explain this in the discussion.

10. Figure 4: it is also good to see the spatial distribution of dry spells NASA Power and AgERA5. Consider including the four RPs and explain the differences among them.

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Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: No

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Attachments

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Submitted filename: Comments.docx

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Submitted filename: Content Copyright Permission Form.pdf

Challenges in reanalysis products to assess extreme weather impacts on agriculture: study case in Southern Sweden.

PCLM-D-22-00005R1

Dear Dr Grusson,

We are pleased to inform you that your manuscript 'Challenges in reanalysis products to assess extreme weather impacts on agriculture: study case in Southern Sweden.' has been provisionally accepted for publication in PLOS Climate.

Before your manuscript can be formally accepted you will need to complete some formatting changes, which you will receive in a follow-up email from a member of our team. 

Please note that your manuscript will not be scheduled for publication until you have made the required changes, so a swift response is appreciated.

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Thank you again for supporting Open Access publishing; we are looking forward to publishing your work in PLOS Climate.

Best regards,

Srivatsan V Raghavan, PhD

Academic Editor

PLOS Climate

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The paper can be accepted as the authors have revised the manuscript to the satisfaction of the reviewers. No more revisions are needed.

Reviewer Comments (if any, and for reference):

Reviewer's Responses to Questions

Comments to the Author

1. If the authors have adequately addressed your comments raised in a previous round of review and you feel that this manuscript is now acceptable for publication, you may indicate that here to bypass the “Comments to the Author” section, enter your conflict of interest statement in the “Confidential to Editor” section, and submit your "Accept" recommendation.

Reviewer #1: All comments have been addressed

Reviewer #2: All comments have been addressed

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2. Does this manuscript meet PLOS Climate’s publication criteria? Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions? The manuscript must describe methodologically and ethically rigorous research with conclusions that are appropriately drawn based on the data presented.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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3. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously?

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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4. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available (please refer to the Data Availability Statement at the start of the manuscript PDF file)?

The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception. The data should be provided as part of the manuscript or its supporting information, or deposited to a public repository. For example, in addition to summary statistics, the data points behind means, medians and variance measures should be available. If there are restrictions on publicly sharing data—e.g. participant privacy or use of data from a third party—those must be specified.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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5. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English?

PLOS Climate does not copyedit accepted manuscripts, so the language in submitted articles must be clear, correct, and unambiguous. Any typographical or grammatical errors should be corrected at revision, so please note any specific errors here.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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6. Review Comments to the Author

Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters)

Reviewer #1: Thanks for your revision. This paper has improved greatly relative to the first version. All the questions have been addressed. I am satisfied with the revision and recommend that this paper can be accepted.

Reviewer #2: The authors have satisfactorily responded to all my questions and made the necessary changes in the manuscript.

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7. PLOS authors have the option to publish the peer review history of their article (what does this mean?). If published, this will include your full peer review and any attached files.

Do you want your identity to be public for this peer review? If you choose “no”, your identity will remain anonymous but your review may still be made public.

For information about this choice, including consent withdrawal, please see our Privacy Policy.

Reviewer #1: Yes: Senfeng LIU

Reviewer #2: No

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