Have precipitation extremes and annual totals been increasing in the world's dry regions over the last 60 years?

Sippel, Sebastian; Zscheischler, Jakob; Heimann, Martin; Lange, Holger; Mahecha, Miguel D.; van Oldenborgh, Geert Jan; Otto, Friederike E. L.; Reichstein, Markus

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-21-441-2017

Articles | Volume 21, issue 1

https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-21-441-2017

© Author(s) 2017. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-21-441-2017

© Author(s) 2017. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.

Articles | Volume 21, issue 1

Research article

|

25 Jan 2017

Research article |

| 25 Jan 2017

Have precipitation extremes and annual totals been increasing in the world's dry regions over the last 60 years?

Sebastian Sippel, Jakob Zscheischler, Martin Heimann, Holger Lange, Miguel D. Mahecha, Geert Jan van Oldenborgh, Friederike E. L. Otto, and Markus Reichstein

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Final revised paper (published on 25 Jan 2017)
Supplement to the final revised paper
Preprint (discussion started on 12 Sep 2016)
Supplement to the preprint

Interactive discussion

Status: closed

AC: Author comment | RC: Referee comment | SC: Short comment | EC: Editor comment

- Printer-friendly version

- Supplement

RC1: 'Review of hess-2016-452', Anonymous Referee #1, 11 Oct 2016
- AC1: 'Response to Reviewer #1', Sebastian Sippel, 21 Nov 2016
RC2: 'Comments on article', Anonymous Referee #2, 20 Oct 2016
- AC2: 'Response to Reviewer #2', Sebastian Sippel, 21 Nov 2016
RC3: 'Review of hess-2016-452', Daithi Stone, 21 Oct 2016
- AC3: 'Response to D. Stone', Sebastian Sippel, 21 Nov 2016
SC1: 'Comment on "Have precipitation extremes and annual totals been increasing in the world's dry regions over the last 60 years? "', Markus G. Donat, 24 Oct 2016
- AC4: 'Response to M. Donat', Sebastian Sippel, 21 Nov 2016
RC4: 'Review of Have precipitation extremes and annual totals been increasing in the world's dry regions over the last 60 years?" Sippel et al.', Anonymous Referee #4, 30 Oct 2016
- AC5: 'Response to Reviewer #4', Sebastian Sippel, 21 Nov 2016
AC6: 'Final Author Comments and analytical approximation of normalisation-induced biases', Sebastian Sippel, 21 Nov 2016

Peer-review completion

AR: Author's response | RR: Referee report | ED: Editor decision

ED: Publish subject to minor revisions (further review by Editor) (14 Dec 2016) by Vazken Andréassian

AR by Sebastian Sippel on behalf of the Authors (25 Dec 2016) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Publish as is (03 Jan 2017) by Vazken Andréassian

AR by Sebastian Sippel on behalf of the Authors (06 Jan 2017) Author's response Manuscript

Short summary

The paper re-investigates the question whether observed precipitation extremes and annual totals have been increasing in the world's dry regions over the last 60 years. Despite recently postulated increasing trends, we demonstrate that large uncertainties prevail due to (1) the choice of dryness definition and (2) statistical data processing. In fact, we find only minor (and only some significant) increases if (1) dryness is based on aridity and (2) statistical artefacts are accounted for.