Monitoring of Extreme Agricultural Drought of the Past 20 Years in Southwest China Using GLDAS Soil Moisture
and Xujun Han 1,2,*Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
The authors consider the case of droughts in the southwest part of China in the last 20 years and assess whether the use of GLDAS data can support studies at a regional scale.
Overall, the paper has merit, but it needs a careful polishing of the language and better organization of the content to ease the reader.
For starters, I would suggest using one or more tables to present the drought indexes mentioned in the paper, provide a definition/formulation of the index, and clarify both strengths and weaknesses in each case. Then, I would also suggest explicitly stating where is the novelty in the authors' approach, and how it can be used. For instance, a drought index is used to assess the severity of the phenomena afterwards, or to try and predict the next one to mitigate its effects? The authors used a dataset spanning the last 20 years to assess whether their methodology can provide reasonable results, even considering the limitations they describe? About the limitations, I would put those in a separate subparagraph to highlight in which cases the proposed approach can be unsuitable.
Please make sure that all acronyms are defined and expanded at their first use. Data should be considered as plural, not singular. The statement, used multiple times, saying that "The above experimental results are consistent with relevant academic research and government statistical records" must be supported with references or removed.
Author Response
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
This paper is an excellent systematic and quantitative paper that evaluates drought characteristics over the past 20 years in southwest China, focusing on three drought indices: SSMI, SPEI, and PDSI, and that SSMI reproduces drought depth, duration, and frequency in the study area. In particular, the overall requirements for engineering papers are sufficiently satisfied and objectively written.
However, using the monthly drought index analysis results, the duration can be known simply by adding the duration of drought in the past, but if an analysis of the duration of drought can be added, it can be used to establish countermeasures for future drought. In other words, if the Severity-Duration-Frequency curve is presented based on SSMI, it will be possible to set quantitative indicators necessary for drought preparation in the future through evaluation of the depth and duration of drought that actually occurred in the past.
Line 155 suggested a maximum of 5500 El.m, but Figure 1 shows a legend of 7387m. For understanding, it is necessary to match with 5500 El.m.
Guangzhou was presented in line 202, but it is omitted in Figure 1. It is an important point, so it needs to be displayed in Figure 1.
In line 248, the description of ?? á„‹á…¦ is omitted.
In line 286, 'I' must be deleted from 'I In February'.
Author Response
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
