Rain erosivity map for Germany derived from  contiguous radar rain data

Auerswald, Karl; Fischer, Franziska K.; Winterrath, Tanja; Brandhuber, Robert

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-23-1819-2019

Articles | Volume 23, issue 4

https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-23-1819-2019

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

https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-23-1819-2019

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

Articles | Volume 23, issue 4

Research article

|

03 Apr 2019

Research article |

| 03 Apr 2019

Rain erosivity map for Germany derived from contiguous radar rain data

Karl Auerswald, Franziska K. Fischer, Tanja Winterrath, and Robert Brandhuber

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Final revised paper (published on 03 Apr 2019)
Supplement to the final revised paper
Preprint (discussion started on 19 Oct 2018)

Interactive discussion

Status: closed

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

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- Supplement

RC1: 'Review by Anton Vrieling', Anton Vrieling, 24 Oct 2018
- AC1: 'Reply to Referee #1', Karl Auerswald, 10 Dec 2018
RC2: 'Review of HESS-2018-504', Anonymous Referee #2, 29 Oct 2018
- AC2: 'Reply to Referee #2', Karl Auerswald, 10 Dec 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) (31 Dec 2018) by Remko Uijlenhoet

AR by Karl Auerswald on behalf of the Authors (31 Dec 2018) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Referee Nomination & Report Request started (03 Jan 2019) by Remko Uijlenhoet

RR by Anton Vrieling (04 Jan 2019)

Suggestions for revision or reasons for rejection

The authors have thoroughly responded to my concerns and updated the manuscript accordingly. I am happy with their responses and with their important and interesting contribution. In my opinion, the manuscript can be published pending a few minor corrections/edits that may be implemented at the authors’ discretion.

- P1L24: as the statement on winter wheat is not directly related to this study, I suggest removing this sentence (or alternatively write as “For example, …”, although my preference is removal).
- P2L28: “and” between “zero” and “erosivity” should be removed.
- P3L11: I suggest not starting the paragraph with “Also” but rather rephrase to: “Existing R maps have also undergone a number of …”
- P3L11: the subsentence “which were rather uncontrolled and of unknown degree” remains vague. Probably the authors want to convey something like: “even if this is not explicitly stated in the corresponding reports”.
- P3L20 “as geostatistical tools existed not yet”. I think that this will not hold in court! In the early 80s we certainly had geostatistics with uses among others in mining. Perhaps rather: “as geostatistical tools were not yet commonplace in various application fields”
- P3L21-22: I would suggest to combine this sentence with the previous paragraph, and delete the rest (P3L23-P3L27) of that paragraph (or maybe integrate in methods). In my view it is too much ‘fast-forwarding’ to the methods section, whereas the main objective of the paper has not been expressed at that point.
- P5L28: I note that this is just a single station in Belgium and the “not deviate” is perhaps in fact a small deviation (not fully clear to which results by van Dijk this relates?). I was thinking to replace “in Belgium” here with “for the nearest European station used in Belgium” (or perhaps to include also the Italian station, also within reasonable vicinity of southern Germany?)
- P15L23-24: I trust that the full links will be added.
- P15L25: “until” should probably read “by”? Can anything be said regarding delivering of these erosivity maps for years after 2019?

Anton Vrieling

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RR by Anonymous Referee #2 (30 Jan 2019)

ED: Publish subject to minor revisions (review by editor) (01 Feb 2019) by Remko Uijlenhoet

AR by Karl Auerswald on behalf of the Authors (21 Feb 2019) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Publish subject to minor revisions (review by editor) (25 Feb 2019) by Remko Uijlenhoet

AR by Karl Auerswald on behalf of the Authors (27 Feb 2019) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Publish subject to minor revisions (review by editor) (01 Mar 2019) by Remko Uijlenhoet

AR by Karl Auerswald on behalf of the Authors (06 Mar 2019) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Publish as is (13 Mar 2019) by Remko Uijlenhoet

Short summary

Radar rain data enable for the first time portraying the erosivity pattern with high spatial and temporal resolution. This allowed quantification of erosivity in Germany with unprecedented detail. Compared to previous estimates, erosivity has strongly increased and its seasonal distribution has changed, presumably due to climate change. As a consequence, erosion for some crops is 4 times higher than previously estimated.