Extreme wet seasons – their definition and relationship  with synoptic-scale weather systems

Flaounas, Emmanouil; Röthlisberger, Matthias; Boettcher, Maxi; Sprenger, Michael; Wernli, Heini

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/wcd-2-71-2021

Articles | Volume 2, issue 1

https://doi.org/10.5194/wcd-2-71-2021

© Author(s) 2021. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/wcd-2-71-2021

© Author(s) 2021. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 2, issue 1

Research article

|

01 Feb 2021

Research article |

| 01 Feb 2021

Extreme wet seasons – their definition and relationship with synoptic-scale weather systems

Emmanouil Flaounas, Matthias Röthlisberger, Maxi Boettcher, Michael Sprenger, and Heini Wernli

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Final revised paper (published on 01 Feb 2021)
Supplement to the final revised paper
Preprint (discussion started on 08 Jul 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 of Extreme wet seasons – their definition and relationship with synoptic scale weather systems by Flaounas et al.', Anonymous Referee #1, 13 Aug 2020
RC2: 'Referee Comment on wcd-2020-28', Anonymous Referee #2, 13 Aug 2020
AC1: 'Replies document', Emmanouil Flaounas, 08 Oct 2020

Peer-review completion

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

AR by Katja Gänger on behalf of the Authors (31 Oct 2020) Author's response

ED: Referee Nomination & Report Request started (17 Nov 2020) by Juliane Schwendike

RR by Anonymous Referee #2 (11 Dec 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

GENERAL COMMENTS:

The authors have satisfactorily addressed my comments on the previous version of this manuscript. In my opinion, the manuscript has been improved substantially and is acceptable for publication in Weather and Climate Dynamics. I have just a few minor comments for the authors to consider (see below). I look forward to the publication of this nice paper.

SPECIFIC COMMENTS:

line 74-75: It could be helpful to also explicitly state here that the stormy winter of 2013/14 involved serial clustering of extratropical cyclones (e.g., Priestley et al. 2017; https://doi.org/10.1002/wea.3025). Cyclone clustering seems like a highly relevant process for extreme seasons that occur in regions located along/near midlatitude storm tracks. Thus, perhaps this topic deserves a bit more discussion in this manuscript.

line 161: Change to "distinct ascending airstreams extending through a cyclone warm sector"

line 196: Insert "midlatitude" before "continental"?

line 430: The plots in Fig. 11 provide a nice global view of the relationships between extreme seasons and the different weather system types. That being said, the maps are rather noisy. Perhaps this is a naive question, but would plotting the average ratio value for all patches at each grid point, rather than overlaying all patches on the map, provide a clearer and cleaner depiction?

TECHNICAL CORRECTIONS:

line 89: wave -> waves
line 200: change the semicolon to a comma
line 399: The contours for RWB occurrences in Fig. 9a appear yellow/brown instead of green.

Hide

RR by Anonymous Referee #1 (15 Dec 2020)

ED: Publish subject to minor revisions (review by editor) (16 Dec 2020) by Juliane Schwendike

Dear Emmanouil and co-authors,

The paper went through a second round of revisions. Reviewer 1 is satisfied with your careful revision of the manuscript, and Reviewer 2 has only minor comments as listed below.

Please provide a revised version of the manuscript within four weeks.

Best wishes,
Juliane

Comments from Reviewer 2

GENERAL COMMENTS:

The authors have satisfactorily addressed my comments on the previous version of this manuscript. In my opinion, the manuscript has been improved substantially and is acceptable for publication in Weather and Climate Dynamics. I have just a few minor comments for the authors to consider (see below). I look forward to the publication of this nice paper.

SPECIFIC COMMENTS:

line 74-75: It could be helpful to also explicitly state here that the stormy winter of 2013/14 involved serial clustering of extratropical cyclones (e.g., Priestley et al. 2017; https://doi.org/10.1002/wea.3025). Cyclone clustering seems like a highly relevant process for extreme seasons that occur in regions located along/near midlatitude storm tracks. Thus, perhaps this topic deserves a bit more discussion in this manuscript.

line 161: Change to "distinct ascending airstreams extending through a cyclone warm sector"

line 196: Insert "midlatitude" before "continental"?

line 430: The plots in Fig. 11 provide a nice global view of the relationships between extreme seasons and the different weather system types. That being said, the maps are rather noisy. Perhaps this is a naive question, but would plotting the average ratio value for all patches at each grid point, rather than overlaying all patches on the map, provide a clearer and cleaner depiction?

TECHNICAL CORRECTIONS:

line 89: wave -> waves
line 200: change the semicolon to a comma
line 399: The contours for RWB occurrences in Fig. 9a appear yellow/brown instead of green.

Hide

AR by Emmanouil Flaounas on behalf of the Authors (24 Dec 2020) Author's response Author's tracked changes Manuscript

ED: Publish as is (13 Jan 2021) by Juliane Schwendike

Short summary

In this study we identify the wettest seasons globally and address their meteorological characteristics. We show that in different regions the wettest seasons occur in different times of the year and result from either unusually high frequencies of wet days and/or daily extremes. These high frequencies can be largely attributed to four specific weather systems, especially cyclones. Our analysis uses a thoroughly explained, novel methodology that could also be applied to climate models.