cc: C G Kilsby <c.g.kilsby@newcastle.ac.uk>
date: Mon Jan 12 12:25:04 2009
from: Phil Jones <p.jones@uea.ac.uk>
subject: Re: JOC-08-0245 - Decision on Manuscript
to: g.mcgregor@auckland.ac.nz

    Glenn,
       I'm afraid these two reviews will definitely discourage me from submitting more papers
    to IJC!  The two reviewers have not realized the novelty of this paper. The WG
    is fairly new and we are certainly not re-inventing the wheel! We didn't do an
    in-depth literature review because of space. If you were still
    in the UK, you'd see this whole UKCIP08 package (now to be called UKCP09)
    including this WG coming out in the spring time (April/May).
       To give you one example - all the papers referred to by the reviewers only
    work at sites with data. The WG in the paper works anywhere in the UK.
       We've had the WG Report which will form part of the UKCP09 package
    formally reviewed very favourably by three experts in the field.
        You've missed a good paper for IJC here! Your reviewers have not read it
    carefully enough - nor understood what it was about. Maybe the latter is my
    fault, attempting to explain too much in a single paper, but I would have hoped
    for something more constructive.
       You can ignore this email if you want. I won't be submitting this paper
    to IJC again.
       On the other paper of mine you rejected a couple of months ago, I'm
    going to re-submit that somewhere else now. These reviews were constructive,
    especially the positive one - that you chose to ignore. At least the reviewers
    understood what the paper was about.
    Cheers
    Phil

   At 10:51 12/01/2009, you wrote:

     12-Jan-2009
     Dear Prof. Jones
     Manuscript # JOC-08-0245 entitled "Perturbing a Weather Generator using factors
     developed from Regional Climate Model simulations" which you submitted to the
     International Journal of Climatology, has been reviewed.  The comments of the
     referee(s), all of whom are leading international experts in this field, are included at
     the bottom of this letter. If the reviewer submitted comments as an attachment this will
     only be visible via your Author Centre. It will not be attached to this email. Log in to
     Manuscript Central, go to your Author Centre, find your manuscript in the "Manuscripts
     with Decisions" queue. Click on the Decision Letter link. Within the Decision letter is
     a further link to the reviewer attachment.
     In view of the comments of the referee(s) your manuscript has been denied publication in
     the International Journal of Climatology.
     Thank you for considering the International Journal of Climatology for the publication
     of your research.  I hope the outcome of this specific submission will not discourage
     you from submitting future manuscripts.
     Sincerely,
     Prof. Glenn McGregor
     Editor, International Journal of Climatology
     g.mcgregor@auckland.ac.nz
     NOTE FROM EDITOR
     I have taken the above decision as there appears to be a number of problems with the
     paper including a deficient review of the literature, few innovative aspects and a lack
     of analysis rigour. Sorry I could not be more positive.
     ===========================
     Referee(s)' Comments to Author:
     Referee: 1
     Comments to the Author
     The paper describes how to link a weather generator, which was developed and published
     by the authors, with predictions from the regional climate model to provide end-users
     with daily climate scenarios for impact assessments as a part of the UKCIP08 project.
     This manuscript has major flaws.
     1. The problem of linking WG with the output of global or regional climate models
     (GCM/RegCM) to generate daily climate scenarios required by process-based impact models
     is not new. Wilks (1992) described the method of linking the WGEN weather generator
     based on a Markov chain model for precipitation with climate predictions derived from
     GCM. In Barrow et al (1996), a methodology of linking the LARS-WG weather generator
     based on series approach with HadCM2 was described and used in the European project on
     the assessment of climate change on agriculture in Europe. From 2002, high resolution
     daily site-specific climate scenarios based on LARS-WG and HadRM3 (UKCIP02) predictions
     were available for the academic community to study impact of climate change in the UK
     (Semenov, 2007). A similar work has been done for the Met&Rol generator in Check
     Republic (Dubrovsky et al, 2004). None of this works has been cited, and their
     manuscript authors are trying to rediscoverEthe wheel.
     2. The methodology of assessing the performance of WG is well established. Statistical
     tests are used to compare probability distributions of observed and simulated weather
     variables (e.g. the K-S test), the t-test and f-test are used to compare observed and
     simulated means and variances, the extreme values theory is used to assess how well WG
     reproduces weather extreme events (Semenov et al, 1998, Qian et al 2004, 2008; Kesley et
     al, 2005; Semenov, 2008). In this paper, authors used a visualEcomparison to compare
     observed and simulated means by plotting data points on a graph. This is unacceptable,
     because no objective conclusions can be derived from such comparison. Proper statistical
     tests must be used instead.
     I recommend to reject this manuscript, it is well below the standard acceptable in IJC
     or any other refereed journals. The manuscript did not contribute to the area of
     research, and the methodology used for comparison is naiveEand unaccepted in scientific
     publications.
     ==============================
     Referee: 2
     Comments to the Author
     All comments to the Author are found in the attached file.

   Prof. Phil Jones
   Climatic Research Unit        Telephone +44 (0) 1603 592090
   School of Environmental Sciences    Fax +44 (0) 1603 507784
   University of East Anglia
   Norwich                          Email    p.jones@uea.ac.uk
   NR4 7TJ
   UK
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