Estimating the Role of Climate Internal Variability and Sources of Uncertainties in Hydrological Climate-Impact Projections

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

There are major concerns related to the manuscript and requires major revision

1.       The simulation period of the SWAT hydrological model is missing.

2.       The spatial resolution of LULC, soil, and DEM has not been mentioned anywhere in the manuscript

3.       In data section of the manuscript it has been mentioned that the precipitation data from 1958 to 2011 was used in this study on monthly temporal scale; however the SWAT requires daily datasets for model set-up. How the monthly datasets was converted into daily precipitation datasets.

4.       There is nothing mentioned about SWAT model performance during calibration and validation. Neither it has been discussed nor has it been tabulated.

5.       What was the scale of calibration and validation?? Whether it was calibrated and validated on daily time step or monthly time step

6.       The model was calibrated from 1982-1996 and validated from 1997-2011 has been mentioned in the study, though the information about the warm-up period duration has not been mentioned anywhere in the manuscript.

7.       The study discusses about the uncertainties, though nothing has been mentioned related to modelling uncertainties associated with the SWAT hydrological model calibration.

8.       There is a requirement of English editing throughout the manuscript.

Author Response

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Reviewer 2 Report

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

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Reviewer 3 Report

This study estimated the contribution of sources of uncertainty and investigated the role of internal variability in hydrological climate impact projections in a representative watershed of Northeastern China. The results of this study may contribute to obtain a robust detection of climate change effects. However, there are some concerns that the authors should address before it can be considered for publication.

(1) I suggest the authors introduce the processing of missing daily precipitation data in the section "data and methods".

(2) I suggest the authors enlarge the text and graphics or improve the resolution of Figures 3, 8, 9.

(3) In order to further highlight the innovation of this article, it is better to compare the results of this study with other studies.

(4) A paragraph of limitation discussion should be added to clarify the limitation or uncertainty of data and methods in this current study. For example, the uncertainty of remote sensing data including land use data (Decuyper et al., 2020; Shen et al., 2022a, b) may affect the research results.

(5) I suggest the authors further point out the research significance of this paper in the conclusion.

References:

Spatio-temporal assessment of beech growth in relation to climate extremes in Slovenia–An integrated approach using remote sensing and tree-ring data. Agricultural and Forest Meteorology, 2020, 287, 107925.

Vegetation greening, extended growing seasons, and temperature feedbacks in warming temperate grasslands of China. Journal of Climate, 2022a, 35, 5103–5117.

Effect of shrub encroachment on land surface temperature in semi-arid areas of temperate regions of the Northern Hemisphere. Agricultural and Forest Meteorology, 2022b, 320, 108943.

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Still the information regarding the point number 6 of the previous comment regarding the warm-up period of the model has been presented properly. The time period from 1978-2006 was used for model set-up. Model set-up and model warm-up are two very different things. Still the time period provided for model warm-up is missing.

Author Response

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Reviewer 2 Report

It can be accepted for publication

Author Response