Hi, I am an applied fruit tree researcher at regional research station in Southwest Germany. We have a manuscript (submitted to a science journal for publication and currently undergoing peer review) about some work we have conducted with fruit tree irrigation strategies over the past three growign seasons. We were wanting to discuss our results / strategies in view of the historical weather patterns (we have good records going back to 1960 or so) and going forward into the future. For the future climate scenarios I downloaded data from the https://cds.climate.copernicus.eu/datasets/projections-cmip6?tab=download site for the following settings, temporal resolution = daily, experiment = SSP5-8.5, variables = Daily maximum near-surface air temperature, Daily minimum near-surface air temperature and Precipitation.
From the approx. 60 models available on the download page, I ended up only using data as a mean of three GCM models (AWI-CM-1-1-MR (Germany), CNRM-CM6-1-HR (France), and CESM2 (USA) for the period 2015 to 2049 for daily max, min and precipitation.
I discarded some of the models, because they already show temperatures for known period 2015 to 2025 that are too low (by a mean temperature of some 2°C). While some other models did not show all of the three variables I was interested in and some models did not have the spatial resolution to be close enough to the specific geo location where are study was conducted. However, to be fair I did not fully explore the output for all 60 models as the data download takes some time and on the Copernicus website I could not find any sort of summary overview of the available models. I was thinking three models as a mean (i.e. three repetitions) would be somewhere in the right ball park.
I justified the model choice in the submitted paper as just explained above but even so one of the reviewers requested a more transparent justification for my choice. The reviewer feedback is as follows. I was wondering if anyone on the forum had some tips on how to deal with this reviewer comment.
Climate Projection Methodology: The selection of only three GCMs and the high-emission scenario SSP5-8.5 should be justified. A sentence acknowledging that this represents a “worst-case” or “high-forcing” scenario is necessary. Furthermore, stating that some models “underestimate current mean temperatures by ~2°C” (Lines 184-185) is a serious critique. How does your selection of three specific models overcome this? Provide a more transparent justification for the choice of AWI-CM-1-1-MR, CNRM-CM6-1-HR, and CESM2.