Climatological moisture sources for the Western North American Monsoon through a Lagrangian approach: their influence on precipitation intensity

Ordoñez, Paulina; Nieto, Raquel; Gimeno, Luis; Ribera, Pedro; Gallego, David; Ochoa-Moya, Carlos Abraham; Quintanar, Arturo Ignacio

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-10-59-2019

Articles | Volume 10, issue 1

https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-10-59-2019

© Author(s) 2019. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Special issue:

The 8th EGU Leonardo Conference: From evaporation to precipitation:...

https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-10-59-2019

© Author(s) 2019. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 10, issue 1

Research article

|

01 Feb 2019

Research article |

| 01 Feb 2019

Climatological moisture sources for the Western North American Monsoon through a Lagrangian approach: their influence on precipitation intensity

Paulina Ordoñez, Raquel Nieto, Luis Gimeno, Pedro Ribera, David Gallego, Carlos Abraham Ochoa-Moya, and Arturo Ignacio Quintanar

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Final revised paper (published on 01 Feb 2019)
Preprint (discussion started on 30 May 2018)

Interactive discussion

Status: closed

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

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- Supplement

RC1: 'Reviewer comments on: "On the origin of moisture related to synoptic-scale rainfall events for the North American Monsoon System"', Enrique R. Vivoni, 02 Jun 2018
- AC1: 'Responses RC Dr. Vivoni', Paulina Ordóñez, 09 Aug 2018
RC2: 'Comments', Ana María Durán-Quesada, 25 Jun 2018
- AC2: 'Responses RC Dr. Duran-Quesada', Paulina Ordóñez, 09 Aug 2018
SC1: 'Comments on Ordoñez et al. by David K. Adams', David Adams, 10 Jul 2018
- AC3: 'Responses SC Dr. Adams', Paulina Ordóñez, 09 Aug 2018

Peer-review completion

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

ED: Reconsider after major revisions (28 Aug 2018) by Sergio Martín Vicente Serrano

AR by Paulina Ordóñez on behalf of the Authors (17 Oct 2018) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Referee Nomination & Report Request started (18 Oct 2018) by Sergio Martín Vicente Serrano

RR by Anonymous Referee #3 (06 Nov 2018)

RR by Anonymous Referee #4 (15 Dec 2018)

Suggestions for revision or reasons for rejection

The paper analyzes the climatological sources for the Western North America Monsoon by using a Lagragian approach through the application of the FLEXPART model. This model has been widely used in different regions of the world as is properly acknowledged in the manuscript. Thus, the methodology is well established and the main novelty of the paper is its application to the NW Mexico-SW USA to track the N American Monsoon.
This is a second version of a previous manuscript. I think the authors have addressed adequately the questions raised by the previous reviewers. In my view, the points raised by D. Adams should be understood by the differences between his meteorological approach and the more climatological one adopted in the paper.
Taking all this into account, I think that the paper can be accepted for publication with minor corrections. This includes a complete revision of the languange and a more careful editing of the text, since several errors are detected through the manuscript
Comments (the gramar revision is not exhaustive)

1- Add ‘backward’ in line 31 of p 3
2- Delete ‘it’ in line 30 od p 4
3- Figure 2 does not show the monthly precipitation distribution. It shows the monthly distribution of precipitation events, which is not the same thing
4- I think that the color scale in fig 3 is not appropriate, it uses blue colors for the dry areas and redish for the wettest ones. I think that is misleading and the color scale should be inverted.
5- Add ‘the’ after during in line 13 of p 7
6- Arrows are difficult to see in figure 5
7- The monsoon onset usually occurs in July, so rephrase the first sentence in line 8 of p 9
8- Holdover should be hold over in line 18 of p 9
9- Line 24, the figure with the E-P values is figure 4, not 5, as incorrectly written.
10- Lines 1 to 23 need rephrasing, since the explanation that they provide about figure 8 is confusing, contains some grammar errors and no clear message comes from them.
11- Figure 3 should be figure 10 in line 32 of p 10
12- Lines 1-12 in p 11 need to be rephrased and clarified
13- I would need an explanation on how the authors see the transient lows (easterly waves or tropical cyclones) off the west Mexican coast in figure 11. The comment of this figure should be more careful
14- Add ‘that’ after suggests in line 1 p12
15- Add ‘climatological’ before ‘large-scale’ in line 7 p 12
16- I think that the term ‘most Eastern part of the Northern Pacific’ is misleading, it refers just to one of the identified areas within the study region, but not to the actual N Pacific
17- Change recycling in line 11 of p 13

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ED: Publish subject to minor revisions (review by editor) (16 Dec 2018) by Sergio Martín Vicente Serrano

AR by Paulina Ordóñez on behalf of the Authors (25 Dec 2018) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Publish as is (07 Jan 2019) by Sergio Martín Vicente Serrano

AR by Paulina Ordóñez on behalf of the Authors (16 Jan 2019) Manuscript

Short summary

The identification of moisture sources for a region is of prominent importance regarding the characterization of precipitation. In this work, the moisture sources for the western North American monsoon (WNAM) region are identified; these sources are the Gulf of California, the WNAM itself, eastern Mexico and the Caribbean Sea. We find that rainfall intensity over the WNAM region is related to the amount of moisture transported from the Caribbean Sea and eastern Mexico during the preceding days.