Peer Review History

Original SubmissionApril 19, 2021
Decision Letter - João Miguel Dias, Editor

PONE-D-21-12932

Assessment of Red Sea temperatures in CMIP5 models for present and future climate

PLOS ONE

Dear Dr. AGULLES,

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

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Kind regards,

João Miguel Dias, Ph.D.

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

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Reviewers' comments:

Reviewer's Responses to Questions

Comments to the Author

1. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions?

The manuscript must describe a technically sound piece of scientific research with data that supports the conclusions. Experiments must have been conducted rigorously, with appropriate controls, replication, and sample sizes. The conclusions must be drawn appropriately based on the data presented.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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

Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: Yes

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3. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available?

The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception (please refer to the Data Availability Statement in the manuscript PDF file). 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 ONE 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 work aims to assess the future projection of the Red Sea temperature in the global warming scenarios of the CMIP5 project. This topic is very relevant and has been poorly studied before. In this sense, I recommend publishing this work in order to increase our knowledge of the GCMs skill to represent the mean state and variability of the temperature field in the Red Sea, as well as the possible consequences that global warming can have in this region. However, there are major comments that should be addressed before publication.

The statistical analysis performed by the authors when assessing changes in Marine Heat Waves must be improved. There is no analysis of the uncertainty, robustness and agreement in models projections for this analysis and the authors only describe the results of the model ensemble average.

I feel that the document is a little disorganized. Most of the figures do not have proper titles or the units of the color palettes, what makes difficult to read them.

Specific comments are available at the joint document.

Reviewer #2: This paper analyses GCM performance in simulating Red Sea temperature, based on which the future projections are made from a subset of models with good performance. The authors have carried out a great deal of detailed work and their results are very reliable. The writing is also very clear and I could barely find any error. I believe the information provided by this paper will be valuable in terms of understanding climate change in this region.

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Reviewer #1: Yes: Juan Pablo Sierra

Reviewer #2: No

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Attachments
Attachment
Submitted filename: Revision.docx
Revision 1

We thank the editor and referee’s comments and the effort they made in reviewing our work. In the new version of the manuscript we have implemented all the points raised in the review. Thanks to those suggestions, we believe the new version of the manuscript has been significantly improved.

In particular, we have updated the figures that needed to be improved, according to the reviewer’s comments. Figures corresponding to the results of each diagnostic have been updated adding the results of the ensemble of the selected GCMs . To clarify purpose, the titles and captions of those figures have been also updated.

In order to address the lack of uncertainty in the MHWs characteristics provided for the future scenarios, we have calculated the projected changes of the MHWs characteristics for each GCMs individually. Then we use the ensemble standard deviation as a measure of the uncertainty for each diagnostic. Besides, we are aware that the supplementary figures were a bit disorganized, so we have re-ordered them to be consistent with the text.

Finally, the rest of the detailed comments have been carefully addressed to fulfill the reviewer’s requirements.

Attachments
Attachment
Submitted filename: Response to Reviewers.docx
Decision Letter - João Miguel Dias, Editor

Assessment of Red Sea temperatures in CMIP5 models for present and future climate

PONE-D-21-12932R1

Dear Dr. AGULLES,

We’re pleased to inform you that your manuscript has been judged scientifically suitable for publication and will be formally accepted for publication once it meets all outstanding technical requirements.

Within one week, you’ll receive an e-mail detailing the required amendments. When these have been addressed, you’ll receive a formal acceptance letter and your manuscript will be scheduled for publication.

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If your institution or institutions have a press office, please notify them about your upcoming paper to help maximize its impact. If they’ll be preparing press materials, please inform our press team as soon as possible -- no later than 48 hours after receiving the formal acceptance. Your manuscript will remain under strict press embargo until 2 pm Eastern Time on the date of publication. For more information, please contact onepress@plos.org.

Kind regards,

João Miguel Dias, Ph.D.

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Additional Editor Comments (optional):

Reviewers' comments:

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

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2. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions?

The manuscript must describe a technically sound piece of scientific research with data that supports the conclusions. Experiments must have been conducted rigorously, with appropriate controls, replication, and sample sizes. The conclusions must be drawn appropriately based on the data presented.

Reviewer #1: Yes

**********

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

Reviewer #1: Yes

**********

4. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available?

The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception (please refer to the Data Availability Statement in the manuscript PDF file). 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

**********

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

PLOS ONE 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

**********

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: The authors have addressed all major comments and this interesting work, in my opinion, is ready to be published.

**********

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.

If you choose “no”, your identity will remain anonymous but your review may still be made public.

Do you want your identity to be public for this peer review? For information about this choice, including consent withdrawal, please see our Privacy Policy.

Reviewer #1: No

Formally Accepted
Acceptance Letter - João Miguel Dias, Editor

PONE-D-21-12932R1

Assessment of Red Sea temperatures in CMIP5 models for present and future climate

Dear Dr. Agulles:

I'm pleased to inform you that your manuscript has been deemed suitable for publication in PLOS ONE. Congratulations! Your manuscript is now with our production department.

If your institution or institutions have a press office, please let them know about your upcoming paper now to help maximize its impact. If they'll be preparing press materials, please inform our press team within the next 48 hours. Your manuscript will remain under strict press embargo until 2 pm Eastern Time on the date of publication. For more information please contact onepress@plos.org.

If we can help with anything else, please email us at plosone@plos.org.

Thank you for submitting your work to PLOS ONE and supporting open access.

Kind regards,

PLOS ONE Editorial Office Staff

on behalf of

Prof. João Miguel Dias

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

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