On the flood peak distributions over China

Yang, Long; Wang, Lachun; Li, Xiang; Gao, Jie

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-23-5133-2019

Articles | Volume 23, issue 12

https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-23-5133-2019

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

https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-23-5133-2019

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

Articles | Volume 23, issue 12

Research article

|

18 Dec 2019

Research article |

| 18 Dec 2019

On the flood peak distributions over China

Long Yang, Lachun Wang, Xiang Li, and Jie Gao

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Final revised paper (published on 18 Dec 2019)
Preprint (discussion started on 12 Jul 2019)

Interactive discussion

Status: closed

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

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- Supplement

SC1: 'Comments on paper by Yang et al.', Qiang Zhang, 17 Jul 2019
- AC1: 'Rely to short comments by Qiang Zhang', Long Yang, 16 Sep 2019
RC1: 'Review for HESS-2019-322', Hong Do, 26 Aug 2019
- AC2: 'Reply to review comments by Hong Do', Long Yang, 16 Sep 2019
RC2: 'Review of hess-2019-322 (Yang et al.): On the Flood Peak Distributions over China', Anonymous Referee #2, 30 Aug 2019
- AC3: 'Reply to review comments by the anonymous reviewer', Long Yang, 16 Sep 2019

Peer-review completion

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

ED: Reconsider after major revisions (further review by editor and referees) (18 Sep 2019) by Xing Yuan

AR by Long Yang on behalf of the Authors (18 Sep 2019) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Referee Nomination & Report Request started (23 Sep 2019) by Xing Yuan

RR by Anonymous Referee #2 (20 Oct 2019)

RR by Hong Do (24 Oct 2019)

Suggestions for revision or reasons for rejection

In the revision, the authors have improved the narrative and structure of the manuscript to provide a stronger link across all analyses. The additional materials (e.g. number of gauges influenced by storms in Table 1) also provide clarification for many aspects of the analyses. The decision to remove flood timing analysis particularly made the study more streamlined and better highlight the key contributions.
Before publication, I have some further comments to be addressed. From my perspective, these comments are fairly straightforward and thus a minor revision is recommended.

1. Data description: the extended description from line 101 to 106 reads quite vague. I’m particularly confused about the statement “For instance, the dates of annual maximum flood peak and highest stage should be comparable, with records of missing flood peak timing discarded to ensure data accuracy”. Does this mean that the authors (or data providers) compared the annual maximum date identified from (i) discharge and (ii) stage records – and for years that either one of them is not available the data points are removed? The author should revise this statement.
A good way to make data quality aspect more transparent is to provide references for data quality control procedure (e.g. a national standard for hydromet information) or include a supplementary table of the original sources (or data providers) for each subset of the whole database. Some information that could be included is the contact (or website) of data providers, data access policy (freely accessible or there is a payable fee) and the practices that were used for quality control (where possible).
2. Section 4.2 now reads alienated from the whole manuscript, mostly due to the removal of most materials related to flood timing analysis. To remedy this issue, a potential way is to add a short paragraph at the data section, mentioning that record of both the magnitude and timing of flood peaks was used for this assessment, of which the timing was used to highlight the mixture of flood-generation mechanisms.
In addition, I am not sure how Figure 6 could be interpreted as “There are three (two) distinct peaks in the seasonal distribution of annual flood peaks for southern (northern) China” as the three lines essentially show only one prominent peak (between date number 150 and 200 for southern China and between 200 and 250 for northern China and caused by TCs). The authors should revise the description to better communicate the key feature of Figure 6. In addition, the x-axis should also be revised to be consistent with the description (i.e. use Jan-Dec rather than 1-365).
3. Figure 3 caption should include the percentage of stations showing significant trends (currently mentioned in the main-text only) to ensure it can be used as a stand-alone element. If prospective readers want to have a brief overview of “how floods have changed across China”, this figure and the improved caption should be the sufficient answer.
4. Figure 5 caption should include the criterion for “insufficient record lengths” (e.g. less than 5 data points?).
5. Figure 7 caption should include the criterion for “stationary stations” (i.e. insignificant change points in mean or in variance or monotonic trends).
6. The final recommendation (about the future data archive) should be extended to specify the future development of the database (e.g. develop a website to make data available or implement the practice of the published hydrological databases).

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ED: Publish subject to minor revisions (review by editor) (25 Oct 2019) by Xing Yuan

AR by Long Yang on behalf of the Authors (25 Oct 2019) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Publish as is (01 Nov 2019) by Xing Yuan