Homogenous Climatic Regions for Targeting Green Water Management Technologies in the Abbay Basin, Ethiopia

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

I reviewed the paper titled “Homogenous climatic regions for targeting green water management technologies in the Abbay Basin, Ethiopia” by Degefie et al. The paper in general is very interesting to the reader. By biggest concern is that is suitability of the paper to the journal topic “Advances in Multi-Scale Geographic Environmental Monitoring: Theory, Methodology and Applications”. However, below are my comments/suggestion on the manuscript.

The introduction is well-written. But, I think lines [104-118] is superfluous.

The authors fucuses in the introduction on the technique used in the Abbay basin. Is there any other developed-techniques for other cases around the world?

More detail on the K-means algorithm is needed. It is briefly illustrated in the paper.

Same elbow method.

The resolution of Figure 2 is very low, which cannot be accepted at all.

Interpretation is needed to findings outlined in lines [225-228].

Line 238 “Based on the graph …”, which graph?

There are different font types were used in the manuscript, which needs fixing. E.g., line[255-258] is different than the previous lines font.

In table 2, the characteristics of cluster 4 and 5 is very similar. Same for clusters 9 and 11. Please clarify.

i do not have comments on the English language of the submitted manuscript. 

Author Response

Responses:

Reviewer I

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

I reviewed the paper titled “Homogenous climatic regions for targeting green water management technologies in the Abbay Basin, Ethiopia” by Degefie et al. The paper in general is very interesting to the reader. By biggest concern is that is suitability of the paper to the journal topic “Advances in Multi-Scale Geographic Environmental Monitoring: Theory, Methodology and Applications”. However, below are my comments/suggestion on the manuscript.

We thank you for reading our paper and providing constructive comments which are helpful to improve the quality of our paper.

 The introduction is well-written. But, I think lines [104-118] is superfluous.

We have removed details presented on Page 3 as suggested.

The authors fucuses in the introduction on the technique used in the Abbay basin. Is there any other developed-techniques for other cases around the world?

In the introduction section, our focus in the Abbay basin is not related to the technique or methodological perspective of climate classification. Rather, we want to show the presence of very high spatiotemporal climate variability and how this very high climate variability has been negatively affecting the practices and productivity of the rain-fed agriculture. It is also used to disclose evidences for Abbay basin that previously introduced soil and water management technologies failed as they were introduced following a one-size-fits-all approach due to the absence of local-scale information on climate variability that is useful to facilitate the introduction and practice of green water management strategies.

More detail on the K-means algorithm is needed. It is briefly illustrated in the paper.

Same elbow method.

We have added details for both methods. Please see page 5 for k-means clustering and page 6 for Elbow method. Details are presented in truck change texts.

The resolution of Figure 2 is very low, which cannot be accepted at all.

We have improved the resolution of Figure 2. See page 7

Interpretation is needed to findings outlined in lines [225-228].

We have added more interpretation as suggested. See page 8, we presented it in truck change texts.

Line 238 “Based on the graph …”, which graph?

Thank you for your observation. We have addressed it by adding (Figure 5). See page 9, we presented it in truck change.

There are different font types were used in the manuscript, which needs fixing. E.g., line[255-258] is different than the previous lines font.

We have adjusted the text font size. See page 10.

In table 2, the characteristics of cluster 4 and 5 is very similar. Same for clusters 9 and 11. Please clarify.

Thank you for your observation. It is expected that some of the climate characteristics are relatively the same or show little variation, particularly between neighboring.  Such similarity is not only observed between climate regions 4 and 5 and 9 and 11, but also between climate regions 2 and 9, between climate regions 1 and 6, between climate regions 4 and 8, and between climate regions 3 and 12.

Most of these issues are already mentioned on page 11, last paragraph. We also added more explanation on this issue (Page 11, last paragraph presented in truck change texts).

Comments on the Quality of English Language

I do not have comments on the English language of the submitted manuscript. 

Author Response File: Author Response.doc

Reviewer 2 Report

I suggest to review Chapter 1 to shorten it, as there is some repeating of ideas.

Line 44 - what do the percentages mean?

Line 47 - why overhead radiation ?

Line 82 - What is BCEOM?

Section 2.3 - Please improve the explanation of onset and cessation dates. It is not clear.  Also, the explanation can be closer to the first reference of this concept.

Line 155 - How was PET estimated? It was not by the "simple bucket 1D water balance model", as PET is an input to such model.

Table 1 - How was PCA applied to time series with a daily and annual time step? Exactly, which variables were considered in PCA?

Line 177 - What do the authors mean by 80% exceedance probability? Is it the 80% percentile of daily precipitation?

Table 2 - Explain what is pentad? Julian day, perhaps? 

Table 2 - How was the rainfall cycle number evaluated?

The English language quality is fair, but needs review namely some commas are missing. And check my comments.

Author Response

Response to Reviewer II

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

I suggest to review Chapter 1 to shorten it, as there is some repeating of ideas.

We thank you for this suggestion, and we have reduced the observed redundancy by removing texts from the last paragraph of the introduction part (Page 3)

Line 44 - what do the percentages mean?

We restated to make it clear. The percentage represents “inter-annual variability in crop production in the rain-fed agriculture”. See page 1 presented in truck change text.

Line 47 - why overhead radiation ?

As it determine the location of ITCZ. We have added tis explanation on page 2.

Line 82 - What is BCEOM?

BCEOM is a French Engineering Consultants that conducted an Integrated Development Master Plan Project.

Section 2.3 - Please improve the explanation of onset and cessation dates. It is not clear.  Also, the explanation can be closer to the first reference of this concept.

We have added explanation on the onset and cessation dates on page 4. We presented in truck change text.

Line 155 - How was PET estimated? It was not by the "simple bucket 1D water balance model", as PET is an input to such model.

We have added explanation on the method of PET calculation on page 4. We presented it in truck change text. PET was computed using Hargreaves method using daily minimum and maximum temperature from ENACT dataset.

Table 1 - How was PCA applied to time series with a daily and annual time step? Exactly, which variables were considered in PCA?

Response: The PCA was not applied directly on the time series data. Rather the exceedance probability applied to prepare single layers out of the annual time series climatic data. Thus, at the end each climatic variable has single layer which is most representative based on occurrence (80%). For PCA analysis all variables were considered

Line 177 - What do the authors mean by 80% exceedance probability? Is it the 80% percentile of daily precipitation?

Elaboration is included in the main text on page 5. We presented in truck change texts.

Table 2 - Explain what is pentad? Julian day, perhaps? 

Explanation is given as foot note in the table 2.

Table 2 - How was the rainfall cycle number evaluated?

It is now addressed in the main body of the manuscript along defining rainfall onset and cessation for two rainy seasons found in the study areas on page 4. We presented in truck change texts.

 Comments on the Quality of English Language

The English language quality is fair, but needs review namely some commas are missing. And check my comments.

We tried to address as much as possible.

Author Response File: Author Response.doc