Seasonal drought prediction for semiarid northeastern Brazil: verification of six hydro-meteorological forecast products

Delgado, José Miguel; Voss, Sebastian; Bürger, Gerd; Vormoor, Klaus; Murawski, Aline; Rodrigues Pereira, José Marcelo; Martins, Eduardo; Vasconcelos Júnior, Francisco; Francke, Till

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-22-5041-2018

Articles | Volume 22, issue 9

https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-22-5041-2018

© Author(s) 2018. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-22-5041-2018

© Author(s) 2018. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 22, issue 9

Research article

|

28 Sep 2018

Research article |

| 28 Sep 2018

Seasonal drought prediction for semiarid northeastern Brazil: verification of six hydro-meteorological forecast products

José Miguel Delgado, Sebastian Voss, Gerd Bürger, Klaus Vormoor, Aline Murawski, José Marcelo Rodrigues Pereira, Eduardo Martins, Francisco Vasconcelos Júnior, and Till Francke

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Final revised paper (published on 28 Sep 2018)
Preprint (discussion started on 26 Oct 2017)

Interactive discussion

Status: closed

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

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- Supplement

RC1: 'COMMENTS on "Seasonal Drought Prediction for Semiarid Northeast Brazil: Verification of Six Hydro-Meteorological Forecast Products"', Anonymous Referee #1, 18 Nov 2017
- AC1: 'Response to anonymous referee #1', Jose Delgado, 06 Apr 2018
RC2: 'Seasonal Drought Prediction for Semiarid Northeast Brazil: Veriﬁcation of Six Hydro-Meteorological Forecast Products', Rasoul Mirabbasi, 10 Mar 2018
- AC2: 'Author's response to Referee Comments', Jose Delgado, 06 Apr 2018

Peer-review completion

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

ED: Reconsider after major revisions (further review by editor and referees) (28 Apr 2018) by Carlo De Michele

AR by Jose Delgado on behalf of the Authors (06 Jul 2018) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Referee Nomination & Report Request started (12 Jul 2018) by Carlo De Michele

RR by Anonymous Referee #3 (01 Aug 2018)

RR by Mohammad Mehdi Bateni (05 Aug 2018)

Suggestions for revision or reasons for rejection

The manuscript describes verification of seasonal drought prediction frameworks using six hydro-meteorological data sets as input. Overall the manuscript is well-written and potentially interesting. However, it still suffers from some drawbacks listed in "specific comments" and "technical corrections".

Specific comments:

-According to my previous recommendations, Brier Skill score used as a metric to evaluate the performance of forecasts of the model. Brier score is introduced by G. W. Brier in 1950 for probabilistic forecasts. Unfortunately, the variables in equation 2 (y_k and o_k) are not fully explained in the manuscript. Theoretically, the forecast probability can adopt any value in [0,1]. However, it seems that they take only values 0 or 1 in your case (dichotomous forecasts). Further explanation is needed. Original (not simplified) formulation of Brier score could be found in:

Bateni, M. M., Behmanesh, J., Bazrafshan, J., Rezaie, H., & De Michele, C. (2018). Simple Short-Term Probabilistic Drought Prediction Using Mediterranean Teleconnection Information. Water Resources Management, 1-14.

-Further explanation is needed in the manuscript for calculation of Brier score of the reference forecast for the desired time period.

Technical corrections:

-Figs. 11 and 12 are not about RMSE. Please correct the legends of those figures.
-On page 5, line 26: "The numbers in the index name refer" should be changed to "The subscripted numbers"
-Abbreviations like BSS or ROCSS should be defined at first mention and used consistently thereafter. In whole text, "Sect." should be written in its full form.
-Subscripts should be used consistently (not somewhere SPI1 and elsewhere SPI01). Do use italics based on guidelines for the journal to avoid ambiguity.

Referee Report: PDF

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ED: Publish subject to minor revisions (review by editor) (07 Aug 2018) by Carlo De Michele

AR by Jose Delgado on behalf of the Authors (09 Aug 2018) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Publish as is (27 Aug 2018) by Carlo De Michele

AR by Jose Delgado on behalf of the Authors (27 Aug 2018)

Short summary

The feasibility of drought prediction is assessed in the Brazilian northeast. The models were provided by a regional agency and a European meteorological agency and downscaling was done using three empirical models. This work showed that the combination of different forecast and downscaling models can provide skillful predictions of drought events on timescales relevant to water managers. But the models also showed little to no skill for quantitative predictions of monthly precipitation.