The response of tropical precipitation to Earth's precession: the role of energy fluxes and vertical stability

Jalihal, Chetankumar; Bosmans, Joyce Helena Catharina; Srinivasan, Jayaraman; Chakraborty, Arindam

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-15-449-2019

Articles | Volume 15, issue 2

https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-15-449-2019

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

https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-15-449-2019

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

Articles | Volume 15, issue 2

Research article

|

19 Mar 2019

Research article |

| 19 Mar 2019

The response of tropical precipitation to Earth's precession: the role of energy fluxes and vertical stability

Chetankumar Jalihal, Joyce Helena Catharina Bosmans, Jayaraman Srinivasan, and Arindam Chakraborty

Download

Final revised paper (published on 19 Mar 2019)
Supplement to the final revised paper
Preprint (discussion started on 30 Aug 2018)

Interactive discussion

Status: closed

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

- Printer-friendly version

- Supplement

RC1: 'cp-2018-108', Anonymous Referee #1, 06 Sep 2018
- AC1: 'Reply to RC1', Chetankumar Jalihal, 27 Nov 2018
RC2: 'Comments on “The response of tropical precipitation to Earth’s precession: The role of fluxes and vertical stability” by Jalihal et al.', Anonymous Referee #2, 01 Nov 2018
- AC2: 'Reply to RC2', Chetankumar Jalihal, 27 Nov 2018

Peer-review completion

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

ED: Reconsider after major revisions (29 Nov 2018) by Qiuzhen Yin

AR by Chetankumar Jalihal on behalf of the Authors (22 Dec 2018) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Referee Nomination & Report Request started (17 Jan 2019) by Qiuzhen Yin

RR by Anonymous Referee #1 (22 Jan 2019)

Suggestions for revision or reasons for rejection

Responses to authors:
I am happy to review again this manuscript. The authors have improved a lot for the quality of the manuscript. This work tried to provide a dynamical understanding of tropical precipitation responses to precession forcings. For this version, if I understood well, the authors attempted to explain the tropical precipitation behaviors by two types of energy fluxes: one covers the horizontal advection of energy and the other is negligible. These two parts should be involved in the methodology, including a clear description for the purpose and advantage, disadvantage of each methodology.
To help revisions, I list my major concerns as follows:

1. structures of this paper after Introduction need to improve:
For the title of Section 2 you can use words like this “Model and experimental description, methodology”, subtitle of this Section 2: Section 2.1 Model and experiment design; Section 2.2 diagnose methodology. This is only a suggestion.
2. The result description seems to begin since 5Page Line20 (i.e., Section 3 Results)
The present title of subtitle, such as “4.1 Tropics”; “4.1.1 Qualitative analysis”, “4.1.2 Quantitative analysis”, are too general. Please revise them by attractive titles.
3. For the results organization, I suggest the authors from the global average to the regional part. When you organize your work, please keep mind that the topic and its connection to the methodology you use to demonstrate or persuade the audiences or readers.
When you finish new revision, I am sure you need do some changes for this abstract and conclusions.
For the second sentence in the current abstract, it is very easy to misunderstand. I think the authors want to express “This has been attributed to the changes in seasonal solar radiation at the top of the atmosphere”
For the Figure caption.
Please avoid the concluded sentences in the Figure description (Such Figure 4). I guess the author want to express “contrast responses of land ocean precipitation to different precession forcings (Pmin-Pmax)”. Please Check all the Figure descrpitoins.
For the introduction, “The paper is organized as follows” should begin from new paragraph.
Recent monsoon dynamics based on MSE also need involve the reference list
Sun Y., T. Zhou, G. Ramstein, C. Contoux and Z. Zhang, 2016: Drivers and mechanisms for enhanced summer monsoon precipitation over East Asia during the mid-Pliocene in the IPSL-CM5A. Climate Dynamics, 46,1437-1457 DOI: 10.1007/s00382-015-2656-4
Sun Y, Ramstein Gilles, Li Laurent. Z X, Contoux Camille, Tan Ning, and Zhou Tianjun, 2018: Quantifying East Asian summer monsoon dynamics in the ECP4.5 scenario with reference to the mid-Piacenzian warm period. Geophysical Research Letters, 45,523-533,https://doi.org/10.1029/2018GL080061

Hide

ED: Publish subject to minor revisions (review by editor) (18 Feb 2019) by Qiuzhen Yin

AR by Chetankumar Jalihal on behalf of the Authors (20 Feb 2019) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Publish as is (26 Feb 2019) by Qiuzhen Yin

AR by Chetankumar Jalihal on behalf of the Authors (01 Mar 2019) Manuscript

Short summary

Insolation is thought to drive monsoons on orbital timescales. We find that insolation can be a trigger for changes in precipitation, but surface energy and vertical stability play an important role too. These feedbacks are found to be dominant over oceans and can even counter the insolation forcing, thus leading to a land–sea differential response in precipitation.