COSMO-CLM Performance and Projection of Daily and Hourly Temperatures Reaching 50 °C or Higher in Southern Iraq
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
The authors have not excluded the "social" parts of the paper. I strongly believe that since this is an atmospheric journal such references should be avoided. If the reader wants to make the connection it is possible without this being written within the manuscript.
Also the authors have not included more stations in the study. I understand the fact that heat waves influence very large areas much larger than the model resolution. However, including more stations would result in a more robust outcome (both in terms of observations quantity and quality).
For the last reason I cannot recommend this manuscript for publishing.
Author Response
Answer to reviewer 1
As suggested, we excluded the "social" parts of the paper. I hope that we will publish these connections in a “social” journal.
Selecting another station like the one of Baghdad, which is on average 2.3°C cooler, compared to Basra (average of May-September maximum temperature during 2012-2109) will require duplicating all the figures and tables. I speculate that the details will change and the percentile of hours and day reaching 50°C will decrease but the overall trend will remain. However, if adding more stations will show the same results it will be possible to draw a map of future trends for the whole country. Such work is not possible to do in one week and it is an idea for another manuscript.
Therefore, I regret your decision not to recommend publication. Nevertheless, we wish to thank referee #1 for the time spent to raise constructive and thoughtful comments. We hope that the time invested to give these comments improved the manuscript.
Reviewer 2 Report
Review of “COSMO-CLM performance and projection of daily and hourly temperatures reaching 50°C or higher in Southern Iraq, and their possible consequences” by Levi and Mann
Comments:
Authors have answered my questions. Some other comments are listed as below.
Major comments:
1.Do authors have any idea why the SD has a bias comparing with the observation?
2.Since both SD and direct model output (DMO) are compared in this study, and if the results based on DMO is more reliable and is used in conclusion, this can be mentioned this in the abstract.
- Line 70: “sourced”=>”sources”
- Line 74: “this”=>”these”
- Line74-76: this sentence should be rewritten, because it has grammar issue.
- Line 19: “In”=>”During”
- Line 15: “The temperature distribution of COSMO-CLM”=> “The temperature distribution from COSMO-CLM output”
8.Line 21: “increases” =>”will increase”
- Please check the grammar carefully throughout the paper.
Author Response
Thanks for your review, the answers are in the attached file.
Author Response File: 
Author Response.docx
Reviewer 3 Report
See attached.
Comments for author File: 
Comments.pdf
Author Response
Answer to reviewer 3
We would like to thanks reviewer #3 for his request to add the SD to figures 7 and 8. We believe it contributes to better understantd the SD impact on the results. In the new version, we increased the dotted line width to better show the SD results.
Thanks for all the spelling and grammar corrections! To manage to submit at the deadline, your diagnosis that the new parts were quickly written is correct.
we would like to thank reviewer #3 for the time spent to read twice the paper and for many constructive and thoughtful comments. We hope that these comments improved the manuscript.
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
This is a paper discussing the performance of the Cosmo model regarding the simulation of high temperatures in Southern Iraq. Although the idea is quite interesting there are some major issues to be addressed.
Beginning with the abstract, lines 23-25, refer to protests and political movements and are irrelevant to the context of the paper.
Line 37: throw out must be replaced with throughout.
The introduction should be rewritten including more similar studies. The first paragraph is an introduction with some irrelevant references. The second is about the consequences high temperatures may have and should be enriched.
At the same time more discussion regarding climatic projections or temperature studies regarding the area of interest should be added.
In materials and methods, a better description of the datasets used for the model simulations should be added. At the same time a better description of the model setup is needed (including the cordex mena domain).
Regarding the discussion, more stations are needed in order to have a more robust outcome. One or two provide a very limited sample.
In 2.3. The SD needs a better description of how it works.
In figure 4 it is DS or SD?
Lines 299-315 are irrelevant and should not be a part of a scientific paper.
For these reasons the manuscipt should not be accepted in its current form.
Author Response
The replay to the review is given in the blue text in the attached file
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
Reviewer 2 Report
please see the attachment
Comments for author File: Comments.pdf
Author Response
The replay to the review is given in the blue text in the attached file
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
Reviewer 3 Report
See attached file.
Comments for author File: Comments.pdf
Author Response
The replay to the review is given in the blue text in the attached file
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
