# Section templates (moves + model sentences from the user's papers)

The bracketed slots are placeholders. The model sentences are adapted from the four source papers.

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## Title
Name the phenomenon and the region. Add a second element after a colon or with "and its association with…".
- "Space–time variability of drought over Vietnam"
- "Drought over Southeast Asia and Its Association with Large-Scale Drivers"
- "Heatwaves in Vietnam: Characteristics and relationship with large-scale climate drivers"
- A question title is also possible: "How does bias correction impact simulated drought characteristics by Regional Climate Models?"

## Abstract (one paragraph, ~200–250 words)
1. **Context or gap (optional, 1–2 sentences).** "Drought may have severe societal, economic, and environmental consequences. However, the space–time characteristics of drought over [region] remain poorly understood." / "While numerous studies have explored [X], few have investigated [Y]. In response to this gap, this study aims to…"
2. **Aim, data and period.** "In this study, we investigate the spatio-temporal variability of [phenomenon] using [index] over [region] for the [1980–2014] period." / "The analysis is based on observed daily maximum temperatures from [102] meteorological stations, spanning the period [1980–2020]."
3. **Methods in one sentence.** "The relationships between [phenomenon] and large-scale climate drivers were examined using the principal component analysis (PCA) and maximum covariance analysis (MCA) techniques."
4. **Results (3–5 sentences).** Begin with "The results show / reveal / indicate…" or "Results showed that…". Name the sub-regions and give the contrasts. Use "Moreover," "In addition," "Notably," "In contrast,".
5. **Implication, last sentence.** "…suggesting a possibility of early prediction for drought at some sub-regions using ENSO." / "This observation provides opportunities for developing a system of seasonal predictions of heatwaves in Vietnam." / "To this end, this study provides a new perspective on…"

## Introduction (5–7 paragraphs, a funnel from global to local)
1. **Definition of the phenomenon.** Open with a defining sentence and its impacts:
   - "Drought is a recurrent, slow-onset, and extreme climate phenomenon over terrestrial land. It often originates from…"
   - "A heatwave is a period of unusually high temperatures, typically characterized by…"
   Then give the classification or types, with citations: "Drought is generally classified into four types: meteorological, agricultural, hydrological, and socioeconomic… Among these types, meteorological drought is the most prevalent and important since it often acts as the starting point of the others."
2. **Characteristics or metrics and why they matter.** "Drought events are often characterized by multiple characteristics…, including duration, inter-arrival time, peak intensity, frequency, and severity. Each of these characteristics may impact [the environment] in very different ways. For instance, … In contrast, …"
3. **Literature funnel.** "On a global scale, … At the continental scale, … At smaller scales, previous studies also showed…". Note disagreements in the literature: "Sheffield et al. (2012) showed little change … while Dai (2013) found…". Add the projections context: "In the context of global warming, [phenomenon] is projected to increase in frequency, severity, and spatial extent…"
4. **Large-scale drivers.** "[Phenomenon] can be driven by large-scale atmospheric and oceanic processes (…). According to X (year), … However, the influence of ENSO on [phenomenon] varies in time and space…" Close with "This suggests that climate drivers result in location-specific impacts on…"
5. **Regional setting and vulnerability.** "Vietnam is recognized as one of the most vulnerable countries to climate change (IPCC, 2013)." / "SEA, comprising Indochina, the Malay Peninsula, and the Maritime Continent, is mostly located within the tropical zone and strongly influenced by the Asian monsoons…"
6. **Gap.** Use one or more of:
   - "Nevertheless, most of these studies have primarily focused on…, and little is known about…"
   - "Despite several existing studies on [X] in [region], these efforts only focused on a specific one or a few countries or sectors (e.g., …)."
   - "However, research on [X] in Vietnam is limited. Existing studies primarily concentrate on… Insufficient attention has been given to…"
   - "To the best of our knowledge, no studies on [X] over the whole [region] have been conducted."
   - Framing as questions is optional: "This raises critical questions: How does…? And, is … necessary when…?"
7. **Aim, approach and novelty.** "The present study aims to comprehensively investigate and understand…" / "The main objective of this study, thus, is to examine…" / "Therefore, the objective of this study is to fill this gap by examining…". Optionally list the steps: "Specifically, we identify… We next employ… Then, … are analysed." A hypothesis can be added: "Our hypothesis is that…". The novelty claim is "This study for the first time presents…". The usefulness claim is "These relationships could play a vital role in the development of…".
8. **Roadmap.** "The rest of the paper is organized as follows. Section 2 describes the data and methods. Results and discussion are presented in Section 3. Finally, conclusions are drawn in Section 4."

## Data and methods
Subsections usually run in this order: Study area → Data → Index definition → Characteristics → Trend analysis → Statistical method (PCA / MCA / K-means / added value) → Climate indices.

- **Study area.** Location and coordinates, coastline, monsoon regime with months, major mountain ranges and their orientation to the prevailing wind, and the sub-region scheme with its citation. "Located along the east coast of the Indochina peninsula (8°–23°N, 102°–110°E), mainland Vietnam … having a long coastline of more than 3,000 km. It has a tropical climate modulated by the Asian monsoon systems: (i) the northeasterly monsoon in the winter (November–April) and (ii) the southwesterly monsoon in the summer (May–October)…" Explain any unusual timing: "The shifting in the rainy season timing to Autumn-Winter months in R4–R5 is attributed to several reasons. Firstly, … Secondly, …"
- **Data.** Give the source, version, resolution, period and number of stations. Describe any screening ("To remove the potential biases introduced by missing data…, … Following this screening process, only 102 stations were used.") and any regridding ("bilinearly interpolated from 0.5° to 0.25°"). Justify the choice: "These time series are long enough for statistical analysis of variability and trends…" / "[Dataset] was already used as a reference product in some previous studies in the SEA region (e.g., …)." / "For this study, the [dataset] is selected for two reasons. Firstly, … Secondly, …"
- **Index.** State why it was chosen over the alternatives: "Unlike many other drought indices that are purely based on rainfall, PDSI is constructed based upon…" / "Therefore, the SPEI is an extension of SPI, with the advantage of being able to identify the impact of temperature on drought severity via PET."
- **Characteristics.** Give operational definitions as a numbered list or bullets, with symbols and units: "Annual number of heatwave events (HWN): total count of heatwave events within a year." State the threshold explicitly: "a drought event is defined when there is a period of at least two consecutive months with SPEI values below −1.0".
- **Methods.** Name the method, then give a one-line rationale, then the equations, then a "where…" clause. "Compared to parametric methods, nonparametric ones have several advantages; for example, they do not require any assumption on the data distribution and can well handle missing data and outliers." The user's convention for PCA is that **PCs are spatial patterns and EOFs are time series**. Keep this convention and state it: "to obtain their spatial patterns (PCs) and time series (EOFs)".
- **Lagged design (when relevant).** "Notably, all climate indices are calculated as the mean of five consecutive months (ONDJF), enabling the study to analyse the influence of the large-scale environment in the preceding period on…"

## Results and discussion
These sections are usually combined. The subsections follow the analysis order: characteristics → spatial patterns → trends → regionalization → drivers (CIs, then SST, then atmospheric moisture).

Each paragraph follows this pattern:
1. **Point to the figure.** "Figure 3 shows / presents / illustrates / depicts / exhibits [what], for [period/domain]."
2. **Main pattern with numbers.** "The results first indicated strong and consistent seasonal variations… with the maximum and minimum values occurring during summer (JJA) and winter (DJF), respectively."
3. **Regional contrasts.** "In contrast, …", "Conversely, …", "Meanwhile, …", "Unlike R1–R3, …". Use the paired-opposite device.
4. **Physical interpretation, hedged.** "This is to be expected, due to soil moisture deficit resulting from the combined effects of high air temperature and very low amount of rainfall during this period." / "This might be related to…" / "This could be attributed to the differences of large-scale forcing associated with…"
5. **Comparison with the literature.** "The results obtained in this study generally align with those of X et al. (2023), though with some discrepancies in values due to differences in the number of stations (102 vs. 144) and the length of the data time series…" / "The increase of drought in recent years in SEA has also been mentioned in previous studies (…)."
6. **Synthesis sentence.** "Overall, …" / "In general, the regional patterns of drought characteristics suggest that different sub-regions have different dominant controls on drought, including…" / "In summary, …"

Other recurring moves:
- Justify a restriction: "We thus restrict our analysis to these first three PCs." / "Therefore, only the first PC will be discussed in the following."
- Caveat an artefact: "Here, one should note that… This is simply because C3 is a subset of C2." / "Note that drought might not happen concurrently in all subregions. For example, …"
- Give a concrete example of an event: "For example, during strong El Niño events like 1997/1998 and 2015/2016, the EOF1s exhibit high positive values, whereas, during La Niña events such as 1988/1989…"
- State limitations and uncertainty: "We also underscore the uncertainties in our analysis when using [reference dataset]…" Weigh your results against contrasting studies fairly: "Our recommendation … is not as strongly emphasized as in previous studies (…). However, these studies only investigated…"

## Conclusions (3–5 paragraphs, or a short intro plus a numbered list)
1. **Restate.** "In this study, we [used/investigated] [index/method] to analyse [what] over [region] for the [period] period." Add one line on the definition or method if that helps the reader.
2. **Novelty.** "To the best of our knowledge, this study is the first in the literature that uses…" / "This is the first time drought conditions over SEA have been comprehensively assessed in relation to…"
3. **Findings.** Present them either as paragraphs ("We show that… Moreover, … Another key finding is that…") or as a numbered list introduced by "The main findings of this study are summarized as follows:". Each item has 2–4 sentences with sub-region codes and numbers.
4. **Synthesis.** Optionally include a schematic: "The abovementioned findings are finally schematized in Fig. 12, indicating the underlying processes that…"
5. **Implications.** "We believe that the results obtained in this study are an important step forward to improve the management of drought impacts in Vietnam, including…" / "The good correlations between… suggest the ability of the drought forecasting and early warning systems for the area, especially when some of the large-scale climate drivers could be predicted in advance such as ENSO."
6. **Future work.** "Further research should also be directed toward better understanding…" / "…which would be an interesting topic to address in a future study." / "However, further exploration is needed to understand…"

## Back matter
- **Acknowledgements.** "This research is supported by [funder] under grant number [no.]. [Initials] was supported by… Two journal reviewers provided excellent comments to improve the quality of the manuscript."
- **Data availability.** Give a numbered list of datasets with URLs: "All data used in this study are openly available and can be freely downloaded from: 1) … 2) …". For restricted station data: "…were sourced from the Data Center, necessitating a license from the Vietnam Meteorological and Hydrological Administration (VMHA) for access."
- **Figure and table captions.** See SKILL.md. Table notes read: "Bold text implies values satisfy the significance level of .05 for a two-sided t test."