Dear Dr. Pu, Thank you for your letter. Sorry for delay of my reply: I ...

3. Is the high geoeffectiveness "overestimated" or "incorrect"?
As shown in Reviewer #2's first and second reports, it is the different definitions of "halo" CMEs
used by Kim et al. and Gopalswamy et al. that make the significant difference of
geoeffectiveness. In Gopalswamy et al.' paper, "halo" CMEs are defined as the CMEs with
apparent angular width of 360 degrees, i.e., FULL halo CMEs; and in Kim et al., "halo" CMEs
are
defined as the CMEs with apparent angular width greater than 120 degrees, i.e., "FULL +
PARTIAL" halo CMEs.
Because most of frontside PARTIAL halo CMEs could not encounter
the Earth, it is understandable why Gopalswamy et al.' geoeffectiveness is significantly higher
than Kim et al.'. Actually, using the data in Gopalswamy et al' paper, the low geoeffectiveness
can also be obtained if using the same definition of halo CMEs as used by Kim et al., as shown
in Reviewer #2's first report.
In summary, both the selection method of frontside halo CMEs
and the high geoeffectiveness in Gopalswamy et al.' paper is reasonable, and acceptable. The
arguments and conclusions in the comment paper are incorrect.
Reviewer #3 (Comments):
The comment on Gopalswamy et al.'s higher rate of geoeffective
front-side full-halo CMEs made by Yermolaev, to my opinion, is
not valid. In Yermolaev's comment, he/she criticizes that
Gopalswamy et al. use harder/illogical criteria to filter
front-side CMEs, which leads those front-side CMEs without
disk activities missed and therefor yields false high rate.
The critic doesn't realize that the high rate is due to the
stricter selection of halo CMEs, not the stricter selection
of front-side CMEs. In different studies, different
definitions of halo CMEs are used. For example, halo CMEs
actually mean those CMEs with angular with larger than 140,
130, or 120 degrees in many studies, such as by Kim et al.
(2005), Wang et al. (2002), Webb et al. (2000), and St. Cyr et al.
(2000). Different definitions will cause different preselected
sample. In Gopalswamy et al.'s paper, only FULL halo CMEs are
considered, that results in 378 events (note this number is for
all halo CMEs no matter where did they come from) from 1996 to
2005. We can make a comparison of this number with the number, 883,
from Kim et al.'s paper. It's obvious that the number by
Gopalswamy et al. is 42.8% of that by Kim et al. even though
the statistical period in Gopalswamy et al.'s paper is more
than two-year longer than that in Kim et al.'s paper. It's
generally accepted that the wider the CME angular width is,
the higher probable is the CME to encounter the Earth and cause
geoeffectiveness. It is because a wider angular width means
that either the location of a CME is closer to the center of
solar disk, where the CME right faces to the Earth, or the