Characteristics of Foehn Wind in Urumqi, China, and Their Relationship with EI Niño and Extreme Heat Events in the Last 15 Years

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

This paper attempted to document the temporal variations of FH events in Urumqi using the data 2008 through 2022. It also attempted to address the relationship between the occurrence of FH events and ENSO.  Several major issues need to be addressed before the paper can be accepted for publication in climate. These major issues and other minor issues are listed below for authors to consider:

1. Introduction part needs rewriting, especially section 1.2 El nino.  These materials provided in tis section are well known and need a lot of cutting. I recommend to simply include any literatures about the relationship between ENSO and FH events if available.

2. The definition of FH event needs to be clarified. The definition in Lines 148-149 is not clear. For example, it does not define the duration of FH events. The instantaneous wind speed not less than 17 m/s is not enough since it does not include any (e.g., low-bound) duration.

3. More analysis is needed for investigating the relationship between FH events and ENSO. Readers are interested in how ENSO affect the FH events from the dynamics/thermodynamics/modulating atmospheric circulation.

4. The paper mentioned "extreme high temperature weather" several times, do you mean "heat waves"? If not, what is the major difference between "extreme high temperature weather" and heat waves?

5. It is well known that the subsidence of airflow due to the terrains bring warm/dry air to the ground. This is not a new finding, but confirmed by your observational analysis. I suggest this point be highlighted in your conclusion.

6. The figures presented in the paper are good and appreciated. However, the description of the figures is not so good due to language issues. Keep in mind that only major findings are needed and are described succinctly. Short description of each figure is recommended and proofreading service by language professionals is necessary.

7. Figure  11 &12: Large fonts for color bars are needed.

8. Lines 150-153: Eqs (1) and (2) are not necessary since they are obvious.

Intensive proofreading service is needed.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

NCEP/NCAR reanalysis data  with the spatial resolution of 2.5 ° × 2.5 °

- it is a very old and bad quality data. It has been shown many times in articles

Please repeat your investigation based on NCEp/CFSR or ERA5 reanalysis and resubmit the article in Climate MDPI

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

I have checked the responses and the manuscript. I believe the authors have addressed my major concerns and fixed the minor issues as well. The paper has been substantially improved. I recommend it for publication in the present form.

Author Response

Thank you very much for your kind words about our manuscript.

Reviewer 2 Report

It's good that you took into account the remark about ERA5 reanalysis.

Now there are several comments:

1. The literary review should be expanded. I would like to see more examples of the analysis of Foehns based on station data and their relationship to circulation indices.

2. It is a very weak discussion. There is no critical view of the results of your work. please add something, may be interannual climate change, dataset was too short.

3. Please do not use abbreviations in the abstract

4. Please add to Keywords Urumqi, China

5. fig 1 please add colorbar for topography and  the weather station location

6. After Fig1 in section 2, please add a figure with graphs based on the weather station data when a typical foehn event observed. We see it on figure 13 , but it must be earlier

7. On Figure 10, it is better to use the legend as on Figure 7

8 Figure 11 please add signatures of units of measurement

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 3

Reviewer 2 Report

good work!