Review Reports

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

My concerns have been addressed.

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

Please see my comments in the attached Word document.

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

This manuscript is a resubmission of an earlier submission. The following is a list of the peer review reports and author responses from that submission.

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The goal of the manuscript „The relationship between the wintertime cold extremes over East Asia with large-scale atmospheric and oceanic teleconnections“ by Yang and colleagues, is to explore the influence of large-scale teleconnection patterns on the SST anomalies during the boreal winter. The scope of the work is suitable for publication in Atmosphere.

I found this manuscript generally well written and using methods with some novel appearing concepts. I have some minor comments and suggestions I would like the authors to address before I can recommend the publication.

Figure 9 and Figure 10 have unreadable year numbers. Could you please explain the reason of using nontraditional length of 12 months? Line 112 you mention that 352 days are (12 months)… Line 37: there should probably be dipole-like instead of diploe-like. Line 40: there should probably be …. is associated with the sea level pressure… instead of … is associated with the seal level pressure… The subtitle of Figure 11 has a space error on line 306 and double dots on line 308. Double dots are also present on line 311. Although I am not native speaker seems to me that the sentence 115-118 has some paste tense problems. I think there should be: ….and then computed the percentage and judged the… instead of … and then compute the percentage and judge the… Line 131. Maybe it would be better to say vicinity of Easts Mongolia instead of coast of East Mongolia as there is actually no sea next to Mongolia. As you used numbers to refer to other articles then I suggest you should do it throughout the article. On line 111 you use (Loikith and Broccoli, 2012, 2014) instead of [18, 20]. Also I couldn´t find the listed reference nr 33 from the text. But I found a cite (Liu and Alexander, 2007) from line 395 which is not listed below references. On line 402 you write: “For instance, Feng, Chen and Li [29]…” but reference number 29 shows that there should be “For instance, Xu, Feng and Chen [29]…” Lastly, please check your grade (degree) marks on line 151 (30oN), line 320 (60oE) and line 345 (30oN), the degree symbol should be upper one.

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

See my comments in attached PDF document.

 

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 3 Report

Review of the manuscript “The relationship between the wintertime cold extremes over East Asia with large-scale atmospheric and oceanic teleconnections” by Yang et al.

 

This manuscript investigates the role of three climates modes on East Asia wintertime cold extreme events. The climate modes are the El-Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO), Arctic Oscillation (AO), West Pacific (WP) teleconnection pattern, which have been extensively studied in previous studies. Monthly indices are used for the climate modes, while the index for cold extremes, measured by a percentile based index, is examined at either daily or monthly time scales. I find that the authors did a fair job on the presentation of the manuscript; it is written mostly error free and figures are legible, although some suggestions are listed below. However, I also find that the main question of the study is neither extensively nor logically addressed. In addition, it seems marginal how much this study contributes to extend our understanding about the impact of the climates mode on cold extremes. Therefore, at current stage, my verdict is that the manuscript does not meet the standard of the journal. My main concerns are also listed below.

 

L52-62: This paragraph seems irrelevant to the topic of this study. The authors’ point is that SST plays an important role in atmospheric teleconnections. First of all, it is not clear why this is an important issue to link an atmospheric mode with cold extremes. Secondly, not all the teleconnections are induced by SST anomalies. This can be demonstrated from an atmosphere only model without varying ocean. Therefore, this paragraph seems to suggest something incorrect.

 

L63-74: These two paragraphs seem also off the target. They first describe that Asian winter is dominated by East Asian winter monsoon (EAWM). Then it moves on to the link between the three climate modes and the EAWM. However, EAWM is not really examined or discussed afterwards.

 

L114: Why do we need two thresholds for the testing? I thought that the 95% confidence level based on randomly sampled distribution would be enough.

 

Fig. 1: Statistical testing is required for this figure because that will tell the likelihood of cold extremes associated with each climate mode.

 

Figs. 2 and 3: With only shading, it is difficult to see the values. Contours or contour labels would be helpful.

 

Fig. 3: In monthly data, the linkage almost disappears.

 

Sec. 3.1.3: This section does not contain a new result.

Fig. 6: Given the fact that the dots are aligned in x-direction and are not continuous in y-direction, I am not sure whether this figure is correct. Fig. 7 does not show this feature.

 

Figs. 8 and 9: Suddenly the aim is shifted to the trend. This weakens the direction of this study. More importantly, examinations are done by eyes, without quantitative comparisons, such as correlations at interannual time scale.

 

Figs. 11-14: This figure is a counter part of Fig. 4. To me their resemblance is not clear. The authors should provide at least some metrics, for example, pattern correlations. Besides, it is difficult to believe one climate mode would show such dominance for a region.

 

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.docx