Meteorological Drought Events and Their Evolution from 1960 to 2015 Using the Daily SWAP Index in Chongqing, China
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
This paper are surely interest paper because the authors try to overcome the challenge in drought, "Easy to understand for non-expert(decision-maker)". However, there are several issues before publication. So, i suggest important three point like below:
- Not a drought in the tile of the manuscript. It's 'meteorological drought', because the lack of precipitation cannot take account of rainfall-runoff or hydrological structure such as dam and reservoir. Also, authors need to discuss the limitation of result in discussion section.
- Authors applied SWAP and estimate annual characteristics of meteorological drought. But, is there are different point with the analysis according to annual precipitation amount?. So, the result (Figure 2, 7, 9, 12) should be compared to annual precipitation amount and its trend.
- Another concern is that the annual trend are also has probability of same trend with annual precipitation. So, I suggest that all of result should be compared and discussed with precipitation trend.
Author Response
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
The authors used the daily precipitation data set of 34 meteorological stations in Chongqing, China, to study historical droughts in the region by means of the standardized weighted average of precipitation index. They found the insignificant trend in average annual duration and severity of the drought events during 1960-2015 but robust inter-decadal fluctuations within these events. They also found that different spatial variations of duration and severity of ordinary drought events among different decades.
This is an interesting paper that shows a nice application of the standardized weighted average of precipitation index for examining the regional variations of historical droughts. I recommend publication pending on minor revisions.
Major comments:
What are causes of the inter-annual and decadal variability of droughts in this region? Are they related to ENSO, Pacific decadal oscillation and/or Indian Ocean Dipole?
Minor comments:
Line 57: Please change “have good application” to “have good applications”.
Line 59: Please define N, and how large is N?
Line 130: Please change “lower -1” to “lower than -1”.
Line 131: Please change “the drought event start” to “the drought event starts”
Line 134: Please change “the drought event end” to “the drought event ends”
Line 157: Why is the capital “t” used in “Ten-day scale”?
Line 334: Please change “The year with long duration of long persistent drought events is” to “The years with long duration of long persistent drought events are”.
Lines 343-344: Should it be “the middle and southeast regions”?
Line 376: Please change “The year with long duration of severe drought events is” to “The years with long duration of severe drought events are”.
Lines 400-401: Please change “The year with long duration of extreme drought events is” to “The year with long duration of extreme drought events are” .
Line 423: Please change “the SWAP” to “The SWAP”.
Author Response
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: 
Author Response.docx
Reviewer 3 Report
The purpose of this paper was to capture drought Events and their Evolution Characteristics in Chongqing by utilizing the daily SWAP Index, run theory, Sen's slope and Pettitt test. The overall design is fine, it is an interesting study with good readability and results which in general presents a specific, easily identifiable advance in knowledge regarding drought tracking at a daily time step. However, the following minor revisions must be taken into account in order to optimize the manuscript so as to be suitable for publication.
- The title could be modified to " ... the Daily SWAP Index, China".
- In the Keywords it must be added the "Pettitt test".
- Line 40: This statement could be further support by using the following citation:
Myronidis, D.; Fotakis, D.; Ioannou, K.; Sgouropoulou, K. Comparison of ten notable meteorological drought indices on tracking the effect of drought on streamflow. Hydrol. Sci. J . 2018, 63:15-16, 2005-2019.
- Line 92: It should be explained why the recent period (2016-2020) was not considered.
- Lines 110-111: A reference is needed so as to support the statement.
- Line 183: It could be added that: ... and it and has been used extensively to detect change points in timeseries. Myronidis, D.; Theofanous, N. Changes in climatic patterns and tourism and their concomitant effect on drinking water transfers into the Region of South Aegean, Greece. Stoch. Env. Res. Risk. A. 2021, 1-15, DOI 10.1007/s00477-021-02015-y.
- Line 217 must be omitted
8. Line 219: It must be added how the multi-year averages were computed.
Author Response
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
Round 2
Reviewer 1 Report
All of my concern for this manuscript was correctly revised.
I'm agree for publication the paper.
Author Response
We appreciate your helpful comments on the paper. Thank you for your agreement!
