Weather extremes over Europe under  1.5 and 2.0&thinsp;°C global warming from HAPPI  regional climate ensemble simulations

Sieck, Kevin; Nam, Christine; Bouwer, Laurens M.; Rechid, Diana; Jacob, Daniela

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-12-457-2021

Articles | Volume 12, issue 2

https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-12-457-2021

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

https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-12-457-2021

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

Articles | Volume 12, issue 2

Research article

|

03 May 2021

Research article |

| 03 May 2021

Weather extremes over Europe under 1.5 and 2.0 °C global warming from HAPPI regional climate ensemble simulations

Kevin Sieck, Christine Nam, Laurens M. Bouwer, Diana Rechid, and Daniela Jacob

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Final revised paper (published on 03 May 2021)
Supplement to the final revised paper
Preprint (discussion started on 20 Feb 2020)

Interactive discussion

Status: closed

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

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- Supplement

SC1: 'Comparison to simulations in previous studies', Laura Suarez-Gutierrez, 21 Feb 2020
- AC2: 'Author response to SC #1', Laurens Bouwer, 02 Jun 2020
RC1: 'Review of esd-2020-4', Anonymous Referee #1, 02 Mar 2020
- AC3: 'Author response to Referee #1', Laurens Bouwer, 02 Jun 2020
RC2: 'Review of Weather extremes over Europe under 1.5°C and 2.0°C global warming from HAPPI regional climate ensemble simulations by Sieck et al.', Anonymous Referee #2, 24 Mar 2020
- AC4: 'Author response to Referee #2', Laurens Bouwer, 02 Jun 2020
RC3: 'Review on Weather extremes over Europe under 1.5 °C and 2.0 °C global warming from HAPPI regional climate ensemble simulations', Anonymous Referee #3, 31 Mar 2020
- AC5: 'Author response to Referee #3', Laurens Bouwer, 02 Jun 2020

Peer-review completion

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

ED: Reconsider after major revisions (05 Jun 2020) by Gabriele Messori

AR by Laurens Bouwer on behalf of the Authors (17 Aug 2020) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Referee Nomination & Report Request started (24 Aug 2020) by Gabriele Messori

RR by Anonymous Referee #2 (02 Sep 2020)

Suggestions for revision or reasons for rejection

The current version clearly improves the paper. However, several parts are still not properly described/discussed, although several points were already raised during the previous review round. Thus, further revisions are necessary before your study can be considered for publication. Please refer to the main points and specific comments below.

MAIN POINTS
---------------
1) HAPPI protocol: The description of the HAPPI approach is much improved. However, it still leaves out many aspects on the validity and limits of the approach, for instance with respect to the climate variability. This was already requested during the previous review process, but is not sufficiently addressed in the current version of the manuscript. For example, you could extend the Supplementary and include a comparison of the temporal variability (and not only the annual cycle) between the HAPPI simulations and observations.

2) Section 2.4:
2a) It would be worth a try to combine this section with the previous one (2.3). The reader would then have a direct overview of the individual indices (including calculation, changes and significance). Additionally, you could avoid the repetitive use of some phrases.
2b) Are the changes calculated from the ensemble mean or median?
2c) The calculation of significance is still unclear. There is no significance test for RI50yr, correct? The description for CDD is confusing: L177 states that differences are calculated similar to ATG28 with a Mann-Whitney U-Test, but you did not use this test for ATG28 but for RX5day… See also main comment 4h) of my first review.

3) Discussion and conclusions: This part is still insufficient. In the previous round, the reviewers raised the important point on how your results relate/compare to other simulations (e.g. the MPI grand ensemble) and to other studies. Laura Suarez-Gutierrez even provided some examples. Nonetheless, you do not consider any of these suggestions. There is not a single reference throughout the whole discussion and conclusion section. Instead, you argue that such a discussion is out of the scope of your paper. However, in order to provide convincing evidence to prove the benefits of your method this must not be neglected. It is even mandatory.

4) Language: The language has improved significantly. Nevertheless, further revisions are needed. There are still some incomprehensible sentences, rather colloquial wording and superficial descriptions. Please also refer to the specific comments below.

SPECIFIC COMMENTS
------------------------
1) References in the text should be sorted either chronologically or alphabetically (see e.g. L30f, L65).

2) L11/12: “… for periods with levels of 1.5°C and 2.0°C global warming …” – Please reword.

3) L20/21: “… relevant to both the private and the public sector.”

4) L32: “However, Mitchell et al. (2016) argue that …”

5) L42-46: Please reword sentences and remove doubling of “bridge the gap between GCM model output and regional climate impact assessment”.

6) L59: Could you add a reference for the IPCC Special Report?

7) L59-61: Please reword sentence.

8) L65/66: Reasoning unclear, please elaborate.

9) L71/72: “… temperature response for 2091-2100 compared to 1861-1880 is 1.55°C under RCP2.6.”

10) L75: “as” instead of “because”?

11) L89-92: Could you include the difference between sponge zone and core domain in Figure 1?

12) L92-96: Please split sentence.

13) L128:/129: “… 1000 data points … 250 data points …” – Maybe include 100/25 members x 10 years?

14) Figure 1: Not every reader might be familiar with the PRUDENCE regions. Please explain abbreviations for individual regions in the figure caption. Some abbreviations are difficult read. Could you increase the readability?

15) L172-174: Please split sentence.

16) Caption Figure 2: “as” instead of “because”?

17) L206: “are” instead of “is”

18) Figure 4: The caption does not match the figure, you mixed up rows and columns.

19) Figure 5: The caption does not match the figure, you mixed up rows and columns. Additionally, there is a doubling of “in percent” and “in %”.

20) L239-243: There is a doubling of the sentence “Where the p-value is greater or equal to …”

21) L239: “Where the resulting p-values are greater or equal to a significance level …” – The null hypothesis is that the distributions are the same, correct? Then it should be “Where the p-values are less or equal to a significance level…”. Otherwise you marked the wrong numbers in Table 1.

22) Table 1: Why did you put the PRUDENCE regions in parentheses? “Hist” should be “current”.

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RR by Anonymous Referee #1 (02 Sep 2020)

RR by Anonymous Referee #3 (07 Sep 2020)

ED: Reconsider after major revisions (08 Sep 2020) by Gabriele Messori

AR by Laurens Bouwer on behalf of the Authors (26 Feb 2021) Author's response Author's tracked changes

ED: Referee Nomination & Report Request started (26 Feb 2021) by Gabriele Messori

RR by Anonymous Referee #1 (03 Mar 2021)

RR by Anonymous Referee #2 (11 Mar 2021)

ED: Publish subject to technical corrections (16 Mar 2021) by Gabriele Messori

AR by Laurens Bouwer on behalf of the Authors (23 Mar 2021) Manuscript

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Short summary

This paper presents new estimates of future extreme weather in Europe, including extreme heat, extreme rainfall and meteorological drought. These new estimates were achieved by repeating model calculations many times, thereby reducing uncertainties of these rare events at low levels of global warming at 1.5 and 2 °C above pre-industrial temperature levels. These results are important, as they help to assess which weather extremes could increase at moderate warming levels and where.