title: Reply to "Comment on 'Power-law correlations in the southern-oscillation-index fluctuations characterizing El Niño'".
abstract: Earlier [Phys. Rev. E 63, 047201 (2001)] we studied the southern oscillation index (SOI). Our findings tended to favor specific physical models for the El Niño description. The Comment by Metzler [Phys. Rev. E 67, 018201 (2003)] on this publication does not give any argument in favor of another El Niño physical model. In contrast, the Comment points out that statistical properties of the SOI data can be explained with a model based on a linear autoregressive process, but such a modeling does not help in identifying the relevant physical mechanisms.
authors.affiliation: SUPRAS and GRASP, B5, Sart Tilman Campus, B-4000 Liège, Belgium.
authors.forename: M
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Ausloos
authors.forename: K
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Ivanova