Quantifying the impacts of compound extremes on agriculture

Haqiqi, Iman; Grogan, Danielle S.; Hertel, Thomas W.; Schlenker, Wolfram

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-25-551-2021

Articles | Volume 25, issue 2

https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-25-551-2021

© Author(s) 2021. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Special issue:

Understanding compound weather and climate events and related...

https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-25-551-2021

© Author(s) 2021. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 25, issue 2

Research article

|

03 Feb 2021

Research article |

| 03 Feb 2021

Quantifying the impacts of compound extremes on agriculture

Iman Haqiqi, Danielle S. Grogan, Thomas W. Hertel, and Wolfram Schlenker

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Final revised paper (published on 03 Feb 2021)
Supplement to the final revised paper
Preprint (discussion started on 30 Jun 2020)

Interactive discussion

Status: closed

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

- Printer-friendly version

- Supplement

RC1: 'hess-2020-275', Anonymous Referee #1, 24 Aug 2020
- AC1: 'Response to the helpful comments of Anonymous Referee #1', Iman Haqiqi, 23 Sep 2020
RC2: 'A good research paper however needs restructuring, not well presented and written', Anonymous Referee #2, 25 Aug 2020
- AC2: 'Response to the helpful comments of Anonymous Referee #2', Iman Haqiqi, 23 Sep 2020

Peer-review completion

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

ED: Publish subject to revisions (further review by editor and referees) (05 Oct 2020) by Bart van den Hurk

AR by Iman Haqiqi on behalf of the Authors (09 Oct 2020) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Publish subject to revisions (further review by editor and referees) (19 Oct 2020) by Bart van den Hurk

AR by Iman Haqiqi on behalf of the Authors (09 Nov 2020) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Referee Nomination & Report Request started (11 Nov 2020) by Bart van den Hurk

RR by Anonymous Referee #2 (30 Nov 2020)

Suggestions for revision or reasons for rejection

Overall:

The paper has been significantly improved. However, it still needs further refinement. My major comments are:

- The first two sections (introduction and method) are still chaotic. It is not easy to follow, many bits and pieces were presented without a flow/structuring. This makes it difficult to read and capture the essence.

- On the contrast, the results, discussion and conclusion sections were really neatly written/revised. The difference in writing, organization/structure and clarity between those two parts is very obvious. I think the authors can further improve the first two sections as they did for the last three.

Introduction:

- Line 19: the starting sentence to the article is awkward. I recommend the authors first guide the reader through the subject and later define what they did. Also, please use past tense, not present, in describing what was done. I also recommend not to use “we” type of personal pronouns.
- Line 33: this is a repetition. The reader can understand what was written before, peer understanding.
- The use of language in telling the narrative in the introduction section is confusing. It is like a combined bits and pieces but lacks flow of a narrative. This section still needs a thorough (not grammatical) editing to detect such issues. There are repetitive sentences and statements. The first paragraph can be divided into two or three as well.
- Line 52: please avoid using “we”, and who do you mean by “we”?
- After line 52: the authors in this revised form again starts the reader education about “textbook” information. I don’t see why any reader would like to read such information. If someone is interested in fundamental agricultural soil moisture relations, they can read a book. In this form, the article is still too long and many unnecessary statements.
- “Beneficial heat is less beneficial without sufficient soil moisture. On the other hand, soil moisture is not beneficial without sufficient heat for plant growth. Harmful heat can be less harmful when there is enough soil” These statements are like taken from a guidebook.
- The authors are telling us limitations of previous studies a lot, however no insight about if their study response to those limitations.
- Line 70: this is a conclusion statement!!!

Methods:

- First sentence: how do the readers supposed to know what the referred studies did and what they are about? Please revise this section.
- Line 76-78: these two sentences are not needed. The information given after is enough for the reader.
- First paragraph: according to the author’s description, the 3rd option is conditional, please correct it.
- Line 88: which metrics?
- Line 98: the section number should be 2.1.1, not 3.3.1, please correct all section numbering
- In data section, many equations were provided. This section is a mix of data, assumption and method. Please either change the section heading or only provide data sources. Furthermore, this section is too detailed for the main text, most of it can be taken to SI.
- Estimation strategy section can be taken from here and described in SI. Same for decomposition method.
- It is very challenging for the reader to follow the content in this section. . The authors can re-organize this section by first describing the models used, their differences, input data resources. Then provide fundamental equations. The rest can be provided as SI. An overview of the models, what they refer to, major differences, metrics used, source of data can be provided in a table so that reader can follow easily the results by checking what has been done in each modelling effort. In the current, flow of the text is confusing.

Results:

- Line 280: Figure 2 doesn’t show precipitation.
- This section was improved significantly and nicely written.

Discussion:

- Line 397: is it a comma or a stop?

Conclusions:
- Nicely written.

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ED: Publish subject to minor revisions (review by editor) (01 Dec 2020) by Bart van den Hurk

AR by Iman Haqiqi on behalf of the Authors (12 Dec 2020) Author's response Author's tracked changes Manuscript

ED: Publish subject to technical corrections (16 Dec 2020) by Bart van den Hurk

AR by Iman Haqiqi on behalf of the Authors (17 Dec 2020) Author's response Manuscript

Short summary

This study combines a fine-scale weather product with outputs of a hydrological model to construct functional metrics of individual and compound hydroclimatic extremes for agriculture. Then, a yield response function is estimated with individual and compound metrics focusing on corn in the United States during the 1981–2015 period. The findings suggest that metrics of compound hydroclimatic extremes are better predictors of corn yield variations than metrics of individual extremes.