the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
| 31 Aug 2026
Climate Modus Operandi
Abstract. This overview paper is a culmination of decades of research into climate, chaos, and nonlinear dynamics. It is a voyage of work done since the early 1980s in nonlinear dynamics in climate. As an expected extension, in 2004 networks introduced into atmospheric sciences (Tsonis and Roebber, 2004). Ever since, it is realized that at longer time and space scales climate operates with its major modes interacting with each other, and that rules and randomness co-exist. Here we present an overview of what we have learned so far.
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Status: open (until 26 Oct 2026)
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RC1: 'Comment on egusphere-2026-4087', Anonymous Referee #1, 19 Sep 2026
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AC1: 'Reply on RC1', Anastasios Tsonis, 21 Sep 2026
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There is probably a misunderstanding here. My intention was not to extensively review my work on climate networks, which I introduced back in 2004. My intention was to offer a short review that connects to a “bigger picture”. Obviously, I did not do this to the reviewer’s satisfaction. And to give him a break, partly this may be my fault, by having a title like that. But, the main idea of this short review is to actually connect it to the “philosophical considerations” as the reviewer states, not to go into deep depth of my past work. After all, what is the point of somebody writing something connected to an award if it is not a bit challenging and out of the previous publications?
Having said that, I will consider some of the suggestions of the reviewer. I agree that I should make the connection between network science and philosophy, add some of the references the reviewer suggests, and modify a bit the text. By the way, I did not include my Tsonis and Swanson 2012 reference, because I did not think it added much to the overall discussion.
I am willing to re-structure a bit the flow of the paper and may revise the tile to be more in line with reviewer’s comments. I thank the reviewer for his time.
Citation: https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2026-4087-AC1
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AC1: 'Reply on RC1', Anastasios Tsonis, 21 Sep 2026
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- 1
This very short review article is submitted, I assume, in connection with the Richardson Medal awarded in 2026 to the first author by the EGU Nonlinear Processes in Geosciences Division. The manuscript provides an overview of the first author’s work in the field of climate networks. However, in its present form, I see several major problems. First, the manuscript is excessively brief, and several sections consist only of figures with no accompanying discussion. Second, the review is not sufficiently comprehensive and overlooks several previous review articles on the same topic. Third, the final part of the manuscript departs almost entirely from the subject of climate networks and develops rather abstract philosophical considerations that are neither substantiated nor clearly connected to the material presented in the main part of the manuscript.
1. Structure and insufficient discussion of the figures
Section 2.1 provides some discussion accompanying Figure 1. However, Sections 2.2, 2.3, 2.4 and 2.5 contain essentially no text, each consisting primarily of a figure. This is not an appropriate structure for a scientific review article. A review cannot become a succession of figures without detailed explanation, critical discussion, and appropriate connections to the existing literature. The discussion resumes only in Section 2.6.
Figure 7 presents 15 climate modes, represented by different indices, together with a complex network of causal links between them. I find it difficult to see how this representation provides a simplification or clearer understanding compared with other approaches, including multiscale approaches. On the contrary, the proposed diagram appears extremely complex, and it is unclear how such a framework could be used in practical applications or to generate testable predictions. Moreover, the authors themselves state that this already highly complex representation is not the “complete picture”, implying that additional modes and connections would need to be incorporated.
The authors should therefore explain much more clearly what is gained from such a representation. In particular, how does this network framework improve our understanding of climate dynamics? What questions can be addressed with it that cannot be addressed, or are more difficult to address, using other statistical or multiscale approaches? Without such a discussion, Figure 7 appears primarily as a visualization of complexity rather than a framework that reduces or organizes it.
2. Positioning with respect to previous review literature
For a review article, the manuscript should at the very least discuss other recent reviews of the same or closely related topics and clearly explain what additional perspective or synthesis the present contribution provides. For example:
Fan et al. (2021), Statistical physics approaches to the complex Earth system, Physics Reports, 896, 1–84. Network approaches occupy a substantial part of this comprehensive review.
Holme and Rocha (2023), Networks of climate change: connecting causes and consequences, Applied Network Science, 8, 10.
Tsonis and Swanson (2012), On the origins of decadal climate variability: a network perspective, Nonlinear Processes in Geophysics, 19, 559–568.
The latter paper is explicitly identified as a “Review article” and is particularly relevant because the first author of the present manuscript was also involved in that work. Surprisingly, it is not cited here. The authors should clearly explain how the present review complements, updates, or extends the perspective presented in the same journal 14 years ago.
3. Final philosophical discussion
The conclusion begins with a short paragraph of approximately four lines that relates directly to the results and ideas discussed in the manuscript. However, from approximately line 159 onward, the manuscript shifts to nearly two pages of philosophical considerations concerning predictability, randomness, and related topics.
In my view, this material is largely disconnected from the scientific subject developed in the preceding sections. It also introduces a succession of references to Gödel, Kolmogorov, Zipf, Prigogine and others without developing sufficiently precise connections between these authors or concepts and the climate-network results discussed in the manuscript. Such broad philosophical statements would require a substantially more rigorous and carefully developed argument to be meaningful in the context of a scientific review. There is also at least one factual error: Ilya Prigogine did not receive the Nobel Prize in 1997, but in 1977.
I recommend removing this entire philosophical section and replacing it with a more focused conclusion discussing what has actually been learned from climate-network approaches, their present limitations, and the main methodological and scientific challenges for future work. If the authors wish to develop the broader epistemological questions concerning randomness, predictability, and the limits of scientific knowledge, these would be more appropriately addressed in a dedicated article, potentially in a philosophy-of-science context (as seems has been done in a paper published in 2024).
Overall, the topic is certainly appropriate for a review article, particularly given the long-standing contributions of the authors to climate-network research. However, the present manuscript is too short and incomplete to provide a sufficiently informative and critical review of the field. A substantial revision would be required, including more discussion of the figures, a broader and more critical coverage of the existing literature, a clear explanation of the added value of the present review relative to previous reviews, and a conclusion focused on climate networks and their scientific contributions and limitations.