Panama’s Current Climate Replicability in a Non-Hydrostatic Regional Climate Model Nested in an Atmospheric General Circulation Model
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
The authors investigated the performances of a non-hydrostatic regional climate model NHRCM over Panama with different spatial resolutions and showed some reasonable results. Yet, there isn’t much direct comparison of results between MRI-AGCM and NHRCM02, which is understandable. According to the metrics used in the manuscript, MRI-AGCM and NHRCM02 have shown similar overall performances over Panama (Tables 2 and 3). MRI-AGCM has even shown slightly higher correlation coefficients. It is hard to say which one is better based on what the authors have provided so far. Thus, I suggest including some brief analysis about both models’ performances over regions related to complex terrain or land cover heterogeneities. NHRCM02 should benefit from its high resolution.
Other comments:
- L46-49: “…but not a study on a climate change”. This sentence is confusing. It implies this study is related to climate change, while the authors have only evaluated models’ performances under current climate. Besides, this statement is not true. Karmalkar, Bradley, & Diaz (2011) studied climate change projections for Central America and Mexico using a regional climate model PRECIS. This work was not about convection permitting simulations, but the spatial resolution was relatively high.
- Figures 2 and 4: The colorbar for the left panel is misleading.
- L110-112: From my point of view, MRI-AGCM and NHRCM02 have shown similar overall performances over Panama. It is hard to draw this conclusion.
- L194-197: This sentence is confusing. Please double-check and rewrite it.
- L212: “There are uncertainties in precipitation”. This sentence is confusing. Please double-check and rewrite it.
References
Karmalkar, A. V., Bradley, R. S., & Diaz, H. F. (2011). Climate change in Central America and Mexico: Regional climate model validation and climate change projections. Climate Dynamics, 37(3), 605–629. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00382-011-1099-9
Author Response
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
The authors present a study about the use of a NHRCM model with different grid spacing to simulate historical temperature and precipitation in Panama’s region. The paper is very brief and focus only on some results concerning the ability of the NHRCM models to reproduce mean surface air temperatures and precipitation in a 20-year period.
It is recommended to add more details about the methods and the adopted regional climate models as well as a more in deep discussion about the obtained results highlighting the added value of the increased resolution of NHRCM with respect to GCM. From the presented results, it seems that the AGCM is more effective in reproducing the observed climate than the NHRCM5 and comparable with NHRCM2.
Author Response
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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 3 Report
See attachment with comments and recommendations.
Comments for author File: Comments.pdf
Author Response
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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Round 2
Reviewer 2 Report
The article has been improved following the reviewers’ comments, especially adding a comparison for precipitation at 8 weather observations. I think that this comparison is important, and the results can be further discussed (for example in Figure 7 we can notice high differences in annual precipitation between NHRCM2 and point observations at Vistamares, how can be motivated?). A map with the location of the 8 weather stations could also be added and the analysis extended not only to annual precipitation but also to extreme values. The replicability of extremes is an important issue for many impact studies (see for example, https://doi.org/10.1038/nclimate3110, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2017.11.007, https://doi.org/10.3390/rs13112025, https://doi.org/10.1002/2017JD027176, https://doi.org/10.1002/2017JD027463). The replicability of extremes is mentioned in the conclusions, and it is expected that precipitation extremes will be better captured by higher resolution models, but this can be easily evaluated for precipitations at the 8 weather stations.
Author Response
Dear Reviwer #2.
Thank you very much for reviewing our manuscript. Please see the attachment for detailed point-by-point responses to your comments.
Regards,
Author Response File: 
Author Response.docx
Reviewer 3 Report
Dear authors. Thank your for the discussion of the results. The additional analysis included was in my opinion needed and I have no further major comments after reading the response and the revised version. All though English is not my native language, I find that some moderate changes are needed during preparation of the final version.
Author Response
Dear Reviewer #3
Thank you very much for reviewing our manuscript.
We are grateful to your satisfactory to our responses to your constructive comments which distinctly improved our manuscript. We asked the English editing offered by MDPI for English proofread.
Best Regards,
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
