Coastal Runoff in the United Arab Emirates—The Hazard and Opportunity
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
I appreciate reading the discussion section that portrays a novel approach from the authors. However, I am rejecting (or a major revision) this paper from a publication since it reads more like a technical report submitted to the engineers of a department than a scientific paper. That’s not how science I conceived or written. Please see my comment below for the scientific writing. These are just a few that I remember after reading the paper, but I am sure there are many more to fix. For future reference, please refrain from making statements that don’t have a reference or not explored in the study. A major concern is that the figures are not clear and hence can not be understood from this end. The authors also did a poor job in informing the reader about how the figures were made.
Line 19: “ we first downloaded and processed the Integrated Multi-satellite Retrievals for Global Precipitation MeasurementMission (IMERG) ” : what does the author mean by downloaded? It’s obvious that they wil download the data before working. Thay are not the owner of the data that is publicly available. More, what do they mean by processed? Did they procees the level 1 data to level three IMEGR data?
Line 39: “ even the wealthiest countries” can the authors show that drought impacts wealthiest countries less than the poor countries? What do they mean by wealthiest countries? Money? Population? Agricultural production? Mining? I would ask them to google “ California drought” and check how many billion dollar were lost in 2012-2016 drought. California is a wealthiest state in the US in terms of agricultural production. What do the authors see? Don’t they see that drought impact the wealthiest countries? Nevertheless, how would they compare that loss to the impacts of drought over the Amazon rainforest? First of all, which one is the wealthiest? The Amazon rainforest or California? Then please rethink about the statement they write or where the overall impact is more?
Major comment1:
For the first time I see that there is no references added in vast of the introduction section. Did the author claim to discoverer invent what they have written in lines 38-66 ( and often thereafter)? That sounds like a technical report not a scientific paper.
LINE 60; which region? Specify.
Line 89-99: references?
106: similar to what? In the previous line they mentioned cyclones. So cyclones cause by cyclone? The sentence is grammatically wrong and difficult to read. Break down and simplify.
109-110: Reference? Many people believe many things. That not how science works.
That why I am calling a technical report, Line 122: still talking about the UAE and its problem. What is the science question there?
Line 132: That’s a task to do.
Line 162: mostly hot? Are there days when the temperature drops below freezing in the summer or not hot? If so, please mention when it’s not.
Line 192-195: this has to be clear to the reader. How did they process and what did they do? Why they need processing of the GPM data is not understood. IMERG data is freely available to the public in hdf format (may also be in ncdf too). What clipping has been done? Otherwise, I don’t agree with lines 463-469.
line 296: how lag time was computed?
Figure 6-7; why the rainfall axes in both the figures are inverted? Difficult to interpret.
470: what is that another source of water?
Figures 8 and 9. What’s do the different colors refer to? Please add color bars for that. I am sorry, but without the colorbara, I can not proceed with reading what the authors wants to convey with the figure.
Lines 428: a link to obtain he data is needed or the authors need to upload the data in a repository.
Section 5.3: Very unclear but an interesting demand how did they came up to Figure 10. If someone wants to reproduce figure 10, how do they do that? A step by step instructions is needed. Where did they receive the runoff volumes and the urbanization levels data? Did they use any data or used any model output? And how did they do with those products to arrive at figure 10.
Major comment2:
The authors didn’t discus the limitations of the study.
Major comment 3:
How the parameters in those equations are calculated. For example, the rainfall data were obtained from GPM. How about the outflow, K, X. I think they need to mention how did they obtain ( including those from the model) each and every value used in that section.
Author Response
Please find the reply to the review report attached.
Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
In Figure 10 indicate the letters a and b in the graphs.
A brief description of each watershed (soil type, land use and land cover, slope, elevation, ...), would be useful to support the discussion of results.
Author Response
Please find the reply to the review report attached.
Author Response File: 
Author Response.docx
Reviewer 3 Report
In AHP you have to add additional criteria focusing on the aquifer (storage, lithology, groundwater flow, water level). Without referring to the MAR potential your conclusion is mix of nice words. The nice storm calculations remain theoretic if you do not have an aquifer to store the water.
Some small corrections: line 379 correct APH to AHP
Line 432 the sentence is not clear
Author Response
Please find the reply to the review report attached.
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
Round 2
Reviewer 1 Report
In figure 6, please correct the axis title for rainfall. Also, don't invert the rainfall axes. With a blue line, it will be easy to distinguish the hydrograph and the rainfall. In fact, the time delay in the runoff response to the rainfall can be observed easily.
Author Response
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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
