On the social dynamics of moisture recycling

Keys, Patrick W.; Wang-Erlandsson, Lan

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-9-829-2018

Articles | Volume 9, issue 2

https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-9-829-2018

© Author(s) 2018. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Special issue:

Social dynamics and planetary boundaries in Earth system...

https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-9-829-2018

© Author(s) 2018. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 9, issue 2

Research article

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14 Jun 2018

Research article | Highlight paper |

| 14 Jun 2018

On the social dynamics of moisture recycling

Patrick W. Keys and Lan Wang-Erlandsson

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Final revised paper (published on 14 Jun 2018)
Preprint (discussion started on 06 Dec 2017)

Interactive discussion

Status: closed

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

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- Supplement

RC1: 'Comments for esd-2017-120', Anonymous Referee #1, 04 Jan 2018
- AC1: 'Response to Reviewer 1', Patrick Keys, 07 Mar 2018
- AC6: 'Attachment (revised manuscript)', Patrick Keys, 08 Mar 2018
RC2: 'Solicited review', Paul Dirmeyer, 04 Jan 2018
- AC2: 'Response to Reviewer 2', Patrick Keys, 07 Mar 2018
- AC7: 'Additional note', Patrick Keys, 08 Mar 2018
RC3: 'Review for ESD-2017-120', Anonymous Referee #3, 05 Jan 2018
- AC4: 'Response to Reviewer 3', Patrick Keys, 07 Mar 2018
- AC8: 'Additional note', Patrick Keys, 08 Mar 2018
RC4: 'Referee comment', Anonymous Referee #4, 16 Jan 2018
- AC5: 'Response to Reviewer 4', Patrick Keys, 07 Mar 2018
- AC9: 'Additional note', Patrick Keys, 08 Mar 2018
EC1: 'Editor Comment', Murugesu Sivapalan, 03 Feb 2018
- AC3: 'Response to Editor', Patrick Keys, 07 Mar 2018
EC2: 'Editor comment', Murugesu Sivapalan, 11 Mar 2018

Peer-review completion

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

ED: Reconsider after major revisions (18 Mar 2018) by Murugesu Sivapalan

AR by Patrick Keys on behalf of the Authors (11 Apr 2018) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Reconsider after major revisions (13 Apr 2018) by Murugesu Sivapalan

ED: Referee Nomination & Report Request started (16 Apr 2018) by Murugesu Sivapalan

RR by Anonymous Referee #5 (25 Apr 2018)

RR by Anonymous Referee #1 (26 Apr 2018)

RR by Paul Dirmeyer (29 Apr 2018)

Suggestions for revision or reasons for rejection

The revised manuscript is much improved, and much much easier for the reader to follow. The reorganization of the manuscript has made the message much clearer and better serves the intent of the authors.

Table 1 greatly aids readers in understanding the terminology used - few if any readers will be well versed in all of these terms, as you are bringing together concepts from (previously) disparate lines of research. Likewise, the new version of Fig 1 is a big improvement. Also, I appreciate the added specific examples that are given throughout Section 4 now - very helpful for comprehension.

All-in-all the manuscript is now of high quality - I suggest only minor revisions (mostly technical but a couple more substantial) based on the specific comments below. All comments below reference pages and line numbers in the marked-up version of the manuscript that accompanied the responses to reviewers.

Specific comments:

P2 L16: The term "unpacking" is informal, colloquial jargon; "understanding" would be a better choice.

P2 L27: "unexploredThese" needs a period and space in between.

P3 L5: change "have" to "has"

Table 1: Next to "Social-ecological systems" put the abbreviation "(SES)" as it is used in the text.

P6 L3: delete "similar"

P9 L7: "grey literature" is also informal and a bit pejorative. Using "non peer-reviewed literature" may be a better choice.

Fig 2: This appears to be a glitch only with this figure as it does not appear in Figs 3 and 4, but there is a blue background to panel (b) that makes the labels unreadable.

Fig 2: In panel (d), what does a negative value for "malnourished children" mean? The whisker goes to -20.

Fig 2 caption: Change "between country and" to "between the country and its".

Figs 2-4: Panel 3 in each, it is hard to digest this information as presented. I think it would help to order the categories on the abscissa by their source values (blue bars), from largest to smallest.

P12 L3: "kids" is informal; say "children". Also, change "evaporation key sources" to "key sources of evaporation".

P13 L19-20: "associated changes in near-surface meteorology"; of what sort? Please give specifics here.

P14 L9: Delete redundant "from".

Sec 3.2.3: The first 2 sentences are largely redundant with text above.

Fig 3: I may have said this before: the large Mediterranean source may be bogus. This is a problem in our estimates using QIBT also, which we were never able to eliminate - a general problem of after-the-fact approaches including WAM-2layers to estimating sources from reanalyses data at low time resolution (much lower than model time steps). The low-level convergence of moisture over the Sahel in the rainy season is between moist air coming from the south and very dry air from the north. The two sides get convolved and impossible to sort out from reanalysis wind fields when tracing backwards in time. Atmospheric models that include water vapor tracers do not show such large moisture transports from the Mediterranean across the Sahara.

P16 L7 (or actually in the reference): GRAIN is an acronym for "Genetic Resources Action INternational" that needs to be expanded.

P16 L27: "influence" implies intent; better to say "affect".

P17 L7-8: change "to a low concentration of moisture supply covering Brazil's entire domain" to "to the remainder of Brazil supplying a low concentration of moisture from a large area"

P17 L14: "72%" must be a typo. Maybe that's 7.2%?

P17 L30: Change "led" back to "lead" - needs to be present tense.

P19 L12: "Rondônia should have a circumflex over the second o.

P21 L29: Change "on precipitation" to "of precipitation".

P22 L6: Change "contribution" to "contributions".

P22 L11: Add "For instance," before "Nigeria experiences..."

Sec 3.4.3: Note somewhere that this subsection refers to the green lines in Fig 5.

P26 L24: I suggest changing "ability" to "potential" or "possibility" - as this is not a solidly proven result. To my knowledge, no one has done water isotope analysis, for instance, to establish the veracity of this model result.

Bottom P 27: Change "export of moisture" to "export of atmospheric moisture" so it is clear you are not referring to transboundary rivers.

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ED: Publish subject to minor revisions (review by editor) (04 May 2018) by Murugesu Sivapalan

AR by Patrick Keys on behalf of the Authors (15 May 2018) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Publish as is (17 May 2018) by Murugesu Sivapalan

AR by Patrick Keys on behalf of the Authors (27 May 2018)

Short summary

Moisture recycling is the atmospheric branch of the water cycle, including evaporation and precipitation. While the physical water cycle is well-understood, the social links among the recipients of precipitation back to the sources of evaporation are not. In this work, we develop a method to determine how these social connections unfold, using a mix of quantitative and qualitative methods, finding that there are distinct types of social connections with corresponding policy and management tools.