A Climatology of Mesoscale Convective Systems in Northwest Mexico during the North American Monsoon

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

In this manuscript, the authors, tried to investigate the climatology of summer season mesoscale convective systems in Northwest Mexico during the north American Monsoon season. They reported the annual and monthly and diurnal occurrence frequency of MCS over the considered region, lightning frequency distribution, and their trajectories.  The manuscript is well organized and at most instances it is clearly written. However, there are some minor concerns regarding the manuscript. The authors are suggested to address the below mentioned minor comments before accepting the manuscript in the MDPI Atmosphere journal.

Minor comments:

1. Page 2, line 37-41: Please make the sentence into two.
2. Page 2 line 76: What is CUPIDO?
3. Page 3, lines 99-119: It would be more convenient to the readers if the authors can provide their objectives/goals in points.
4. Page 5, lines 172-177: The sentence is not clear please rewrite it.
5. Page 7, line 267, Page 14, Figure 8 caption, Page 20, line 532: Correct the typo error.
6. Page 17, figure 8: It would be more convenient to the readers, if the authors can provide Band A, B, & C lines in Figure 8 similar to Figure 3.
7. Page 15, Figure 9: Figure 9 is missed with color bar.
8. Page 18-20: Figures 10, 11, &12 seems small in size, authors can enlarge their size.

Author Response

Hi,

Please see the attachment.

Saludos,

Omar Ramos y coautores.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

Review of the manuscript "A Climatology of Mesoscale Convective Systems in Northwest Mexico During the North American Monsoon" by Omar  Ramos-Pérez and co-authors.

Long-term climate data on Mesoscale Convective System morphology and lifecycle, intensity, and possible propagation mechanisms are analyzed in this study, which covers 23 years of the North American Monsoon. Everything from the motivation to the presentation of the object-based identification algorithm to the interpretation of the results is clearly explained in the paper's excellent written and visual presentation. I recommend a moderate revision before resubmitting it for publication. The following are my thoughts:

• Depending on the morphology and propagation of the MCS, as well as the intensity of the disease, there are a wide variety of MCS. As this study tracked and classified over 1,500 MCS, it is critical to apply any type of regionalization (clustering) to show homogenous spatial patterns of MCS according to their various characteristics and to demonstrate how these patterns differ based on altitude, latitude, longitude, distance from the coastline, etc. of the MCS studied.
• When analyzing 23 summers (from 1995 to 2017), the number of MCS varied widely; thus, it is important to identify trends and temporal variability in the frequency of these MCS and possible driving forces of this variability. In addition, why did you choose this time period? How come your data didn't include information from the year 2020 or more recent years?
• In the Introduction and Conclusions chapters, it is important to better highlight where the important novelty of the work lies.
• A good idea is to describe the potential applications of your findings (for example, how assessing the climatology of MCS could be relevant to the features of extreme temperature and precipitation that were found in the study area).
• Testing of the criteria's sensitivity is necessary in this work (e.g. BT threshold, correlation between MSC cloud shield radius and BT threshold). In this regard, the BT threshold selection figure (not shown) should be included in the main text.
• The text is sometimes difficult to read and understand because of the excessive use of abbreviations. Acronyms and abbreviations should be used sparingly or in a table.
• A separate chapter for "conclusions" would be ideal.
• A discussion of some results in the results section can sometimes detract from the manuscript's structure.
• There is a dearth of specifics in the abstract (e.g. study period, number of detected MCS, and possible implications of the obtained results). All these basic information should be included in the abstract.
• A table that lists all of the various elements that make up MSC delineation (e.g. area, shape, track, duration, etc.) should be included.
• The study area depicted in Figure 1 was defined on what basis?
• There should be a brief sub-section highlighting the current investigation's potential limitations (e.g. uncertainty associated with remote sensing data, coarse spatial resolution of some products [e.g. ERA5]).
• There should be labels for the two axes in Figure 2.
• Several small issues with syntax and style still need to be addressed.

Author Response

Hi,

Please see the attachment.

Saludos,

Omar Ramos y coautores

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

The authors have responded adequately to the comments raised in the earlier revision. I believe that the manuscript in its latest version can be accepted for publication.