In submitting the manuscript, the authors certify that:

• They are authorized by their co-authors to enter into these arrangements.
• The work described has not been published before (except in the form of an abstract or as part of a published lecture, review or thesis), that it is not under consideration for publication elsewhere, that its publication has been approved by all the author(s) and by the responsible authorities – tacitly or explicitly – of the institutes where the work has been carried out.
• They secure the right to reproduce any material that has already been published or copyrighted elsewhere.
• They agree to the following license and copyright agreement:

• Copyright on any article is retained by the author(s). Regarding copyright transfers please see below.
• Authors grant Copernicus Publications a license to publish the article and identify itself as the original publisher.
• Authors grant Copernicus Publications commercial rights to produce hardcopy volumes of the journal for sale to libraries and individuals.
• Authors grant any third party the right to use the article freely as long as its original authors and citation details are identified.
• The article is distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0  License. Unless otherwise stated, associated published material is distributed under the same licence:

Many authors have strict regulations in their contract of employment regarding their works. A transfer of copyright to the institution or company, as well as the reservation of specific usage rights, is typical. Please note that in the case of open-access publications in combination with a Creative Commons License, a transfer of the copyright to the institution is possible, as it belongs to the author anyway and is not subject to the publisher.

Any usage rights are regulated through the Creative Commons License. As Copernicus Publications uses the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License, anyone (the author, his/her institution/company, the publisher, as well as the public) is free to copy, distribute, transmit, and adapt the work as long as the original author is given credit (see above). Therefore, specific usage rights cannot be reserved by the author or his/her institution/company, and the publisher cannot include a statement "all rights reserved" in any published paper.

A copyright transfer from the author to his/her institution/company will be expressed in a special "Copyright Statement" at the end of the publication rather than on the first page in the article citation header. Authors are asked to include the following sentence: "The author's copyright for this publication is transferred to institution/company".

The license and copyright agreement of Copernicus Publications respects the Crown copyright. For works written by authors affiliated with the British Government and its institutions, a copyright statement will be included at the end of the publication. Authors are asked to use the following statement, which has been approved by the Information Policy department of The National Archives: