The European 2015 drought from a hydrological perspective

Laaha, Gregor; Gauster, Tobias; Tallaksen, Lena M.; Vidal, Jean-Philippe; Stahl, Kerstin; Prudhomme, Christel; Heudorfer, Benedikt; Vlnas, Radek; Ionita, Monica; Van Lanen, Henny A. J.; Adler, Mary-Jeanne; Caillouet, Laurie; Delus, Claire; Fendekova, Miriam; Gailliez, Sebastien; Hannaford, Jamie; Kingston, Daniel; Van Loon, Anne F.; Mediero, Luis; Osuch, Marzena; Romanowicz, Renata; Sauquet, Eric; Stagge, James H.; Wong, Wai K.

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-21-3001-2017

Articles | Volume 21, issue 6

https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-21-3001-2017

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

Special issue:

HYPER Droughts (HYdrological Precipitation – Evaporation...

https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-21-3001-2017

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

Articles | Volume 21, issue 6

Research article

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22 Jun 2017

Research article | Highlight paper |

| 22 Jun 2017

The European 2015 drought from a hydrological perspective

Gregor Laaha, Tobias Gauster, Lena M. Tallaksen, Jean-Philippe Vidal, Kerstin Stahl, Christel Prudhomme, Benedikt Heudorfer, Radek Vlnas, Monica Ionita, Henny A. J. Van Lanen, Mary-Jeanne Adler, Laurie Caillouet, Claire Delus, Miriam Fendekova, Sebastien Gailliez, Jamie Hannaford, Daniel Kingston, Anne F. Van Loon, Luis Mediero, Marzena Osuch, Renata Romanowicz, Eric Sauquet, James H. Stagge, and Wai K. Wong

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Final revised paper (published on 22 Jun 2017)
Preprint (discussion started on 26 Jul 2016)

Interactive discussion

Status: closed

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

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- Supplement

RC1: 'Review', Anonymous Referee #1, 23 Sep 2016
- AC1: 'Response to the comment of Referee #1', Gregor Laaha, 16 Dec 2016
RC2: 'Review hess-2016-366', Anonymous Referee #2, 04 Nov 2016
- AC2: 'Response to the comment of Referee #2', Gregor Laaha, 16 Dec 2016

Peer-review completion

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

ED: Publish subject to revisions (further review by Editor and Referees) (02 Jan 2017) by Laurent Pfister

AR by Gregor Laaha on behalf of the Authors (15 Feb 2017) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Referee Nomination & Report Request started (26 Feb 2017) by Laurent Pfister

RR by Anonymous Referee #2 (01 Apr 2017)

Suggestions for revision or reasons for rejection

I have appreciated the efforts made by authors to clarify my major comments.
I strongly suggest that a native English speaker revises the writing, the current version of the manuscript has several errors and does not flows well.

I have still some minor comments
Page 1
Line 27. Large part of Europe was …
Line 27. Footprint. Maybe in the abstract would be better to use a more widely used terminology.
Line 28. I do not see the reason to mention in brackets “magnitude”, here and in the following lines of abstract. Consider to remove it.
Line 37. Diverging. I think it is not clear to what it is referring to.

Page 2
Line 13. Remove now, not needed
Line 30. I think “timely” is more appropriate than “thorough” in this context

Page 3
Line 24. “and are therefore spatially variable as well”. Consider to remove it, not needed.

Page 4
Line 28. with respect to their spatial coverage

Page 6
Line 2-4. You do not need to introduce the general formulation with n
Lines 7-10. Information not relevant, consider to remove it

Page 7
Line 8. Suggested instead of recommended.
Line 14. I suppose return period have been calculated by inversion of the fitting function. Plase clarify.
Line 28. Mixed mixture model… are you sure? Strange nomenclature
Line 29, Please, clarify for what event has been computed.

Page 9
Line 6. Please, introduce in methods how you identify winter low flows.
Line 17. Avoid the use of slightly, repetition
Line 22. Exceptional conditions. Not clear what you mean, please clarify.
Line 30 and following. This material should be mentioned in the method section.

Page 10
Line 2. Unclear, please clarify.

Page 11
Lines 23-26. Material for methods

Page 12
Line 12. While some regional features…
Line 20. The maps exhibit … features. Please, consider to remove, not needed.
Line 24-25. Rephrase

Page 13
Lines 1-10. Please, clarify why you have performed this analysis and what are the main findings. Not clear at all. Furthermore, this mostly material for methods.
Line 4. Clarify to what correlations these numbers refer.
Lines 5-6. Counterintuitive result, please clarify.
Line 14. Please, add reference “droughts is one of the most costly hazards”

Page 14
Line 18. It is interesting to analyse? Let the reader think if it is interesting or not.

Page 16. I still think that the paper would benefit if this part would be removed completely. This is not related to your findings, It does not add any relevant information.
Line 33. Personal communications by who?? Please, use appropriate references.

Page 23. First two references are reported wrongly.

Figure 2. It would be useful to see the number of stations used for the boxplots
Figure 3. Add color palette
Figure 6 and 7. Panel a and b are redundant, please remove them. In panels c-h, use larger dots. For the reference stations of altschtaining use a different type of line, is confounded with the y=0 line. I suppose that each gray line is a station in panels i-n. Please clarify in captions.
Figure 10. Exaplain the meaning of seasonality in caption. Change colour for potentially ongoing (not extreme) and potentially ongoing (most extreme) to improve visual distinction.
Table A1-A3. I suppose that numbers refer to return period. Please clarify in caption. Bars on the right are redundant and do not add relevant information, please consider to remove them.

Referee Report: PDF

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ED: Publish subject to minor revisions (further review by Editor) (23 Apr 2017) by Laurent Pfister

AR by Gregor Laaha on behalf of the Authors (13 May 2017) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Publish as is (15 May 2017) by Laurent Pfister

AR by Gregor Laaha on behalf of the Authors (16 May 2017)

Short summary

In 2015 large parts of Europe were affected by a drought. In terms of low flow magnitude, a region around the Czech Republic was most affected, with return periods > 100 yr. In terms of deficit volumes, the drought was particularly severe around S. Germany where the event lasted notably long. Meteorological and hydrological events developed differently in space and time. For an assessment of drought impacts on water resources, hydrological data are required in addition to meteorological indices.