Attribution of precipitation to cyclones and fronts over Europe  in a kilometer-scale regional climate simulation

Rüdisühli, Stefan; Sprenger, Michael; Leutwyler, David; Schär, Christoph; Wernli, Heini

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/wcd-1-675-2020

Articles | Volume 1, issue 2

https://doi.org/10.5194/wcd-1-675-2020

© Author(s) 2020. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/wcd-1-675-2020

© Author(s) 2020. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 1, issue 2

Research article

|

28 Oct 2020

Research article |

| 28 Oct 2020

Attribution of precipitation to cyclones and fronts over Europe in a kilometer-scale regional climate simulation

Stefan Rüdisühli, Michael Sprenger, David Leutwyler, Christoph Schär, and Heini Wernli

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Final revised paper (published on 28 Oct 2020)
Supplement to the final revised paper
Preprint (discussion started on 12 May 2020)
Supplement to the preprint

Interactive discussion

Status: closed

AC: Author comment | RC: Referee comment | SC: Short comment | EC: Editor comment

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RC1: 'Review', Anonymous Referee #1, 11 Jun 2020
RC2: 'Review', Anonymous Referee #2, 16 Jun 2020
AC1: 'Replies to review', Stefan Rüdisühli, 23 Jul 2020

Peer-review completion

AR: Author's response | RR: Referee report | ED: Editor decision

AR by Stefan Rüdisühli on behalf of the Authors (21 Aug 2020) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Referee Nomination & Report Request started (29 Aug 2020) by Silvio Davolio

RR by Anonymous Referee #1 (14 Sep 2020)

For final publication, the manuscript should be

accepted as is

accepted subject to technical corrections

accepted subject to minor revisions

reconsidered after major revisions

I would be willing to review the revised paper, if the editor considers it necessary.

I am not willing to review the revised paper.

rejected

Suggestions for revision or reasons for rejection

I am very impressed how thoroughly the authors addressed the reviewers’ comments. I find the revised paper to be much clearer.

It was a little confusing to see the tracked changes where all added text was crossed out. But the clean manuscript is fine.

I believe the manuscript can be accepted for publication in WCD.

Minor remarks:

L. 121: Are high-pressure systems also tracked?

l. 245: This is a matter of personal preference, but I find 1/6 better than 0.167.

l. 564: High-pressure heavy precipitation contributions are increased in summer and fall. While all other regions experience more high-pressure precipitation in summer than in fall, the opposite is true in the Mediterranean Sea
I’d say something like : “The role of high-pressure systems in heavy precipitation increases in summer and even more so in fall. This is in contrast to all other regions where more precipitation occurs with high-pressure systems precipitation in summer than in fall”

l.575: While I agree that analysis of a longer period may be insightful, I do not get the reasoning within these lines: Why NAO variability suggests that a longer period is needed? Did the nine years of the analysis see only a narrow range of possible NAO indexes?

l. 578: “Such an online analysis ..” I think ‘an’ is not needed.

Fig.12: Similar to WF and CF, I’d refer to high-pressure systems as HP (but still like ‘FAR’ for the far frontal). Instead of “… the annual-mean precipitation contribution of one front-cyclone-relative component…”, I’d say “… the seasonal precipitation contribution from each of seven components (or weather systems)…”
l.542: Instead of ‘They stand out’ I suggest “This region stands out”
L.550: I’d change to something like “…, precipitation in Southern Europe benefits greatly form cyclones, while the contribution from warm fronts is reduced. The latter is observed in all southern regions of the domain”

As a final remark, I think that residual precipitation may be associated with high-level processes (such as, e.g., cut-off lows) that cannot be identified within the weather systems considered in the paper. This can explain a large amount of unattributable precipitation over the Iberian Peninsular.

I’d appreciate if you could comment why the Mediterranean sees a lot of precipitation from cyclones compared to fronts: is it because fronts are shorter and do not extend much outside the cyclone area or because there are many non-frontal cyclones (if so, do they mainly develop from the upper troposphere, e.g. following a Rossby wave breaking, or from the surface due to local heating. The former may explain why cyclones play even larger role in heavy precipitation). I understand that analysis of the development and structure of cyclones is outside the focus of the paper, but some ideas either from your experience or other papers would be valuable.

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RR by Anonymous Referee #2 (21 Sep 2020)

ED: Publish subject to technical corrections (22 Sep 2020) by Silvio Davolio

AR by Stefan Rüdisühli on behalf of the Authors (30 Sep 2020) Author's response Manuscript

Short summary

Most precipitation over Europe is linked to low-pressure systems, cold fronts, warm fronts, or high-pressure systems. Based on a massive computer simulation able to resolve thunderstorms, we quantify in detail how much precipitation these weather systems produced during 2000–2008. We find distinct seasonal and regional differences, such as fronts precipitating a lot in fall and winter over the North Atlantic but high-pressure systems mostly in summer over the continent by way of thunderstorms.