Peer Review - Atmosphere Forecasting the Impact of Climate Change and Climate Teleconnections on Wildfires in Mexico Brief Summary The authors investigate methods for forecasting future wildfire frequency and area burned in Mexico based on data related to climate change and teleconnections. Five decades of data are used, going back to 1970, and forecasts are made for up to 2035. Machine learning is employed, assisted by identified periodicites/patterns obtained from the multiple cross wavelet algorithm that simultaneously investigates all considered time series. A spatial analysis to identify hot spots was also presented that identified two major concentration zones. The paper is fairly well written and organized, and | have listed below the few typos and areas of poor grammar that stood out to me as needing revisions. | have also identified a few issues and areas of possible improvement below that should be addressed and/or responded to prior to being considered ready for publication ‘Major Comments 1 2. Page 11: Section 3.2, Paragraphs 5 and 7 (discussing Figure 4). ‘+ Do the authors have a quantitative measure of how accurate they believe these forecasts for 2023 ~ 2035 are? There are currently no measures of uncertainty accompanying the forecasts in red (the dots and dashed lines). In Figure 4, there is a large spike in forecasted area burned in 2033. It wouldn’t be unreasonable for there to be such a spike observed in one or more years, but how certain is the forecast that this would happen in 2033 instead of 2032 or 2034? If the nature of the machine learning methods does not allow measures of uncertainty to be calculated/approximated, this should be discussed as a limitation of the method, as uncertainty would be a very important consideration for future planning, Estimating future inter-annual variability is briefly discussed, but no numbers are provided other than stating that there is a high level of confidence. This paragraph would benefit, from providing more detail on this process and the corresponding numerical results. This study analyzes many valuable sources of data, describing several teleconnections, ‘temperature and precipitation records, a drought severity index, and accumulated cyclonic energy. However, the relative importance or impact of these variables on their model's predictive capability is not discussed. Are the authors able to investigate this topic within the context of their study? For example, determining which teleconnection(s) explain most of the variation within ‘their machine learning model. Such information would be beneficial to future studies on wildfire (in particular, about Mexico) as it may help others with model selection or in prioritizing what data sources to obtain The analyses within this study are broken down into three components. The first two, about ‘temporal co-variations and forecasting, are connected, while the third about spatial analysis appears to be disjoint from the others. The goal appears to be to discuss both temporal and spatial planning. | recommend that the authors strongly consider connecting these results by applying their forecasting methodologies to not just Mexico in its entirety, but also specifically to the two‘major concentration zones identified in their spatial analysis. Given their claim that the methods can be applied to other countries, it should be straight forward to instead apply them to a subset of their original study region. This would aid future planning since not only would fire fighting agencies know when they need to have more resources, but how/where they should station them spatially Minor Comments 1 The authors are emphasizing the risks and dangers of wildfire, which is appropriate given the focus of their study. However, wildfires do also have positive impacts to ecosystems, as well, and it would be appropriate to acknowledge this briefly. On page 2, a paragraph begins “It is essential to take measures to prevent forest fires and reduce their impacts on both human health and the environment..”. Instead, the paragraph could open with something like “W! known to have some positive impacts such as , it prevent and/or mitigate undesired forest fires to reduce negative impacts on both human health and the environment... forest fires are essential to take measures to In their abstract, the authors emphasize that their methodology can be extended to other countries. This is brought up again at the bottom of page 17 and the top of page 18 (“Our algorithms and methodology may be replicated to predict wildfires in any other country if the underlying data analyses by MCW supports the multi-variables connection”). However, on page 11, the authors state “Given the peculiarities of wildfires in Canada and the USA, the wildfire activity and variation for both countries have been analyzed in another study separately” which implies that the process of applying their methods to other regions may not be straight forward. | think that if the authors want to emphasize this in their abstract, then the topic of how to use the methodology in other regions should be given a bit more attention in the discussion, and that they should discuss potential challenges. Page 2: Introduction, Paragraphs 2 and 3. * The authors should consider providing a citation or two for their discussion on the chemistry of various pollutants. Page 2: Introduction, Paragraph 6. ‘+ This paragraph is unclear. The authors are promoting the historic benefits of cultural burning but then say that these practices can be adopted again to prevent the use of fire in agricultural practices. Would these practices not be an example of the use of fire in agricultural matters? The authors alternate between describing 1970-2020 and 1970-2022 as the five-decade time window of their historical data. If this isa typo, it should be fixed. Otherwise, they should clearly discuss the fact that they don’t have certain data for certain years and the impact that this has on ‘their study.6. Pages 6-7: Section 2.2, Item VI ‘* The authors can consider explicitly specifying the quadratic cost function after mentioning it for the benefit of the reader. 7. Page 9: Section 3.2, Paragraph 2 (and Figure 4). ‘© The authors define o* and a” as a standard deviation above or below the mean value. However, in Figure 4, they use a* and a, with the negative sign in a subscript instead of a superscript. This should be easy to fix. Furthermore, these symbols could be made a little more visible on the figure itself, in addition to being defined in the caption. Lastly, the bottom dashed line in Figure 4(b) extends past the right edge of the plot, which should be fixed. 8. Page 11: Section 3.3, Paragraph 5 (discussing Figure 5). ‘* Many labels such as (C, IV) are referred to, but are not present on the figure. Since the labels are on a grid, is the reader's understanding of their locations assumed? It should be straightforward to add some of the omitted labels onto the diagram to avoid confusion, Furthermore, the authors should consider whether it would be beneficial to simply draw the actual quadrant boundaries on the map to avoid needing to specify them by listing coordinates in this paragraph 9. Page 13: Section 3.3.1, Paragraph 1 ‘* The authors should consider adding more details on how wildfire hotspot confidence levels are calculated. 10. Page 16: Discussion, Paragraph 3. ‘* The comment on periodicities of 5-7 years being associated with ENSO should have a citation. Typos / Grammar Issues 1. Page 2: Introduction, Paragraph 1. + “Unfortunately, due to human activities, particularly forest fires, these events have become one of the most significant sources of polluting emissions in recent decades.” | think this could be rephrased to be a bit clearer. If I'm understanding the point of this statement correctly, it would be along the lines of “Unfortunately, an increase in human- caused forest fires has resulted in wildfire events becoming one of the most significant sources of polluting emissions in recent decades.” 2. Page 2: Introduction, Paragraph 2 ‘+ Rather than saying “... such as carbon dioxide, which is one greenhouse gas", would it be better to say "... such as carbon dioxide, which is a greenhouse gas”? 3. Page 2: Introduction, Paragraph 3. ‘©The sentence “Impact of wildfires on the air .. for some monitoring stations” needs to be re-written to improve its grammar.4, Page 5: Section 2.1, Paragraph 3. © “with | = 1,2, ..,n", Should this be an i rather than an [? 5. Page 6: Section 2.1.1, Paragraph 1 ‘© Should “adopte” be “adopt” or “adopted”? Section 2.1.1, Paragraph 2. ‘* You use ”* in Equation (4) but then refer to it as Vj in the following sentence. This should be made consistent. 7. Page 7: Section 2.2, Item Vil ‘©The phrase “of the estimate next high cycle” needs to be re-wi 8. Page 9: Section 3.2, Paragraph 3 ‘© The paragraph “As can be seen ... from 2000 to 2010” would benefit from having its grammar improved, 9. Page 14: Figure 6, Caption ‘+ Assuming that“... and b) Sum of fie .." is intended to be read as a single sentence, then “Sum” should not be capitalized. 10. Page 17: Discussion, Paragraph 16. © Should 2022 + 3 be 2022 + 2?