Impact of climate model resolution on soil moisture projections in central-western Europe

van der Linden, Eveline C.; Haarsma, Reindert J.; van der Schrier, Gerard

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-23-191-2019

Articles | Volume 23, issue 1

https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-23-191-2019

© Author(s) 2019. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-23-191-2019

© Author(s) 2019. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 23, issue 1

Research article

|

15 Jan 2019

Research article |

| 15 Jan 2019

Impact of climate model resolution on soil moisture projections in central-western Europe

Eveline C. van der Linden, Reindert J. Haarsma, and Gerard van der Schrier

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Final revised paper (published on 15 Jan 2019)
Preprint (discussion started on 23 May 2018)

Interactive discussion

Status: closed

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

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- Supplement

RC1: 'Review of "Resolution-dependence of future European soil moisture droughts"', Anonymous Referee #1, 03 Jul 2018
- AC1: 'Response to Reviewer #1', Eveline van der Linden, 11 Sep 2018
RC2: 'Reviewer comment.', Luis Samaniego, 18 Aug 2018
- AC2: 'Response to Reviewer #2', Eveline van der Linden, 11 Sep 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) (10 Oct 2018) by Kerstin Stahl

AR by Eveline van der Linden on behalf of the Authors (11 Oct 2018) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Referee Nomination & Report Request started (01 Nov 2018) by Kerstin Stahl

RR by Anonymous Referee #1 (28 Nov 2018)

Suggestions for revision or reasons for rejection

This is a re-review of the manuscript entitled "Impact of climate model resolution on soil moisture projections in central-western Europe" by Eveline C. van der Linden et al.
presenting differences between low (standard) resolution and high-resolution runs of EC-Earth with respect to soil moisture over central Europe. Compared to the previous version, the authors have changed the main focus of the study from assessing soil moisture droughts to mean changes in soil moisture conditions.

I appreciate the changes made by the authors and their thorough response to the reviewer's comments. The manuscript is now better structured and the modeling approach is explained in more detail. However, I still query the robustness of the drought assessment and would like the authors to enhance the discussion on flaws and limitations of their approach (see comment below). Apart from this, it is my assessment that the manuscript is suitable for publication in HESS after considering the additional comments provided below.

Additional comments (page and line numbers refer to the tracked changes document provided in the author response):

p. 1, l. 24: See e.g., also Greve et al. (2017, https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/aa89a3) for a more in-depth soil moisture analysis over a wide range of climates. This might also be referenced on p. 3, l. 8, adding also Scheff et al. (2017, https://doi.org/10.1175/JCLI-D-16-0854.1). Both studies provide a direct assessment of climate model output.

p. 6, l. 16: This might be confusing to many readers. You better write "aridity metric" or "measure of aridity". The "aridity index" is usually referred to as the ratio of potential evaporation and precipitation.

p. 6, l.24ff: You have a limited sample size, which is not a problem per se, but does to a certain extent limit the robustness of your results regarding droughts. I do not want you to remove the drought assessment from the paper. However, I would really encourage you to include a discussion on the limitations of your approach using a rather small sample to define drought severity. A 1/30yrs event might happen 4 times in another 30 yrs sample. Or it never happens. Hence, a separation into extreme, severe and moderate droughts seems a bit random to me and you may think about using only one drought class? If you keep the 3 classes, please discuss the potential flaws of this approach in more detail. You might also consider to avoid providing percentage values here. A definition based on an x/30yrs is sufficient in my opinion (like you do in Sec. 5.1).

p. 7, l. 11: "European distribution of future soil moisture anomalies" sounds a bit confusing here (I would expect something like in Fig. 10). Better write "maps of future soil moisture anomalies"

p. 10, l. 10ff: I appreciate the clarifications you made regarding the storage term in the land water balance. However, please consider being consistent with the terms "soil water storage", "soil water content", "soil moisture", and "soil moisture storage". Please also note again that ice and snow are the only other relevant storage components in HTESSEL and open water bodies are not included.

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ED: Publish subject to minor revisions (review by editor) (18 Dec 2018) by Kerstin Stahl

AR by Eveline van der Linden on behalf of the Authors (20 Dec 2018) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Publish subject to technical corrections (23 Dec 2018) by Kerstin Stahl

AR by Eveline van der Linden on behalf of the Authors (25 Dec 2018) Manuscript

Short summary

This paper provides a process-based assessment of the impact of spatial model resolution on future projections of European soil moisture changes. In central-western Europe, simulated future drying is more severe and starts earlier in the season at higher global resolution compared to conventional resolution simulations. The enhanced drying suggests that future projections of central-western European drying by conventional resolution global climate models have been potentially underestimated.