Dear Dr. Parrott:

I have reviewed your manuscript, "Comment on "On the probability of extreme space weather
events", by P. Riley." I am unable to accept the Comment for publication.

Space Weather adheres to the publications standards of the American Geophysical Union
(AGU). AGU prohibits the submission of material for publication that has been previously
published in any form that constitutes public distribution.
See http://publications.agu.org/author-resource-center/publication-policies/dual-publication-policy/

Since both your comment and the supplement appear on the web page
http://www.math.umb.edu/~sp/papers.html you have publicly distributed the material prior 
to submission to Space Weather.

Additionally, I have examined the Riley manuscript and find that his work stated that 
applications of a power law distribution for any of the severe space weather 
classifications were assumptions. Other assumptions were also clearly stated. There are
adequate cautionary statements and caveats in the work to cause any serious reader
to understand that the work was presenting estimates based on sparse data. An independent
review of the Riley paper by a scientist with expertise in applications of power laws
reached a similar conclusion.

Shortly after the Riley paper was published, there was a Carrington-class event directed
off axis from Earth. The magnitude of this event was recorded by space sensors and has been
widely discussed in the scientific literature. Thus, even if the dual publication issue had
not arisen, I see little reason to begin a comment-reply cycle with referees, who would
most likely report that: 1) the Riley paper provided adequate cautionary statements, and 2)
an extreme event has already been realized in a near-miss scenario.

Thank you for your interest in discipline of Space Weather and the probability of extreme events.



[Signed by an editor]