PCLM-D-23-00040

SPATIO-TEMPORAL VARIABILITY AND TRENDS OF RAINFALL CHARACTERISTICS AND THEIR INFLUENCE ON THE MAIZE SEASONAL CALENDAR IN SOUTHERN CENTRAL RIFT VALLEY OF ETHIOPIA

PLOS Climate

Dear Dr. Markos,

Thank you for submitting your manuscript to PLOS Climate. After careful consideration, we feel that it has merit but does not fully meet PLOS Climate’s publication criteria as it currently stands. Therefore, we invite you to submit a revised version of the manuscript that addresses the points raised during the review process.

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Guidelines for resubmitting your figure files are available below the reviewer comments at the end of this letter.

We look forward to receiving your revised manuscript.

Kind regards,

Erin Coughlan de Perez, PhD

Academic Editor

PLOS Climate

Journal Requirements:

1. Please indicate by return email the full and correct funding information for your study and confirm the order in which funding contributions should appear. 

Additional Editor Comments (if provided):

Thank you for this interesting article. The reviewers have noted a few points for revision, which would improve the article. I would also like to make two suggestions: first, it would be good to include confidence intervals around many of your estimates. Second, there are many different results for each region, which provides a lot of detail in the text. It might be good to move some of the details into a Supplementary Information, where a reader can look up specific results for specific regions, and focus instead on a few highlights of your analysis in the text, which are the focus of your discussion and conclusions.

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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: Yes

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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: The study aimed to understand rainfall variability in southern central rift valley of Ethiopia, in order to establish crop calendar related agronomic decisions. The study used thirty years of daily rainfall data to characterize rainfall, define start and end of seasons, analyze dry spell and evaluate conditional risks of alternative planting dates. Results showed high variability in annual total rainfall and seasonal rainfall during different periods, with maize plants suffering moisture stress in some areas during certain months. Rainfall onset has been shifting forward and growing periods are becoming unstable. The study suggests the need for real-time local agro-metrological advisory and incorporation of local factors with modern climate models for synchronized calendar estimates. Below are a few comments:

1. The Introduction section needs improvement. What does ITCZ mean? The third paragraph doesn’t belong to this section. It should be put to section 2.1. Also please explain why clustering is needed and detail how was the approach from Haile and Yakrotasgia applied in this study.

2. The Data section is not clear. What are the time range for each data source? How did you merge data from different sources and make them consistent?

3. Please improve the quality of Figure 1.

4. Please show the location of stations on a map for a better view of the distribution.

5. In Table 1, please unify the longitude and latitude format and provide data source for each station.

6. Please adjust the order of equations.

7. Figure 7, why Bilate cluster is different from other three?

8. Table 6, how was risky period due to short dry season determined.

9. There are too many cluster names and they are not consistent throughout the paper. Please make them consistent.

10. Table 6 is for maize only. How about other crops, such as teff?

Reviewer #2: Comments

1. The title is too long; it would be more relevant if the word characteristics was eliminated.

2. The abstract is more comprehensive and well-written.

3. The introduction is good, but it is preferable to use recent study findings rather than old references such as Gemechu, 1987, and Gamachu, 1988.

4. The methodology section is more sound and effective.

5. The results and discussion sections are also good.

6. Because the conclusion section is too long, summarize your main points and make the context of your argument clear.

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Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: No

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Attachments

Attachment

Submitted filename: PCLM-D-23-00040 Agere 40.docx

SPATIO-TEMPORAL VARIABILITY AND RAINFALL TREND AFFECTS SEASONAL CALENDAR OF MAIZE PRODUCTION IN SOUTHERN CENTRAL RIFT VALLEY OF ETHIOPIA

PCLM-D-23-00040R1

Dear Mr. Markos,

We are pleased to inform you that your manuscript 'SPATIO-TEMPORAL VARIABILITY AND RAINFALL TREND AFFECTS SEASONAL CALENDAR OF MAIZE PRODUCTION IN SOUTHERN CENTRAL RIFT VALLEY OF ETHIOPIA' 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,

Erin Coughlan de Perez, PhD

Academic Editor

PLOS Climate

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Thank you for sending me the track-changes version. This revised manuscript responds to the reviewer comments and is recommended for publication.

Reviewer Comments (if any, and for reference):