Practical Dynamical-Statistical Reconstruction of Ocean’s Interior from Satellite Observations

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Please, see Comments in the attached file

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Dear reviewer,

We appreciate you for your contributions to our manuscript. We have tryed our best to enrich the contents of the manuscript. The attached files contains the point-to-point response to your comments. Hoping that you could be satisfied with the new version.

Best regards,

Ren Zhang

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

The authors develop and test a "statistical dynamical" method to extend surface information to depth. The method adds a "fisrt-guess correction" to improve satellite salinity estimates before they are fed, together with sea-surface temperature, into the surface quasigeostrophic (SQG) machinery. The subsurface predictions using this new method are evaluated against data from Argo profiles and compared with results from different flavors of SQG projections and regression algorithms. 

The problem of projecting satellite information to depth is extremely relevant in physical oceanography and remote sensing and thus has strong scientific merit. The present manuscript, however, fails to provide technical details about the new method, the main novelty. What's worse, the manuscript overstates the conclusions, claiming that their new method are superior than other methods, while their results indicate a marginal improvement. Finally, the manuscript needs some tightening up, especially the text. I recommend the manuscript be accepted after the point below are addressed and the conclusions are tuned down.

Major points

1. The main novelty here is the FG framework and its coupling with the SQG-mEOF-R method. This framework is poorly described in the manuscript.  The authors must add details about this framework and explain and justify their choices. The "technique flow" in figure 1 is helpful, but it is somewhat cumbersome and could use some simplification.
2. Why ADT? SQG is a theory for the eddies, so it's a bit puzzling that the absolute dynamic topography (ADT) instead of sea-level anomaly (SLA) is used in the analysis. Please, justify your choice of ADT, explaining why it should be used instead of SLA. If you wish the continue using ADT, please show that it's more accurate than SLA.

Text

The main text needs considerable improvement. There are a few typos and a number of small stylistic and grammatical issues, including misuse or overuse of articles, misuse of prepositions, and misuse of commas. More important, the authors employ questionable vocabulary throughout the manuscript (e.g., "innate difference" instead of "intrinsic difference"; "supreme performance" instead of "superior performance"). I will not provide a full list of small textual glitches, but I request the authors significantly improve their text.

Author Response

Dear reviewer,

Thank you very much for your valuable comments. We have added explanations and new evidences to improve the manuscript. The point to point responses can be seen in the attachment.

Best regards,

Ren Zhang

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 3 Report

Practical Dynamical-Statistical Reconstruction of Ocean’s Interior from Satellite Observations by Yan et al.

This paper examined the five different algorithms for reconstructing data and compared their results with Argo data.  Among them, dynamical-statistical method SQG-mEOF-R seems to be better than others. Although this paper is significant to remote sensing community for subsurface property estimations, more comparisons (especially mesoscale case) are needed before accepting this paper for publication in Remote Sensing.

 

Major comments

Line 47, ”The SQG theory is a special case of quasi-geostrophic dynamics that is intended to highlight the role of surface buoyancy in mesoscale motions”. With this statement, Figure 2 shows comparisons in NWP and SEP. However, in order to examine mesoscale activities, authors need to show eddy included subsurface structures for comparisons. Similarly, authors show Figures 3 and 5 for more comparisions. I think that mesoscale of motions in ocean interior is really important.  Thus, eddy involved activities need to be compared.

 

Minor comments

1. Line 65, authors defined L17, which is not clear how to define. It seems that L17 means Liu et al paper in 2017 . In this case, it should be clearly stated how it is defined.
2. 451 Line, there are two “National”. It is need to be checked.

Author Response

Dear reviewer,

We are grateful to you for your valuable comments and strict requirements. The manuscript has been revised according to your suggestions. The point-to-point response can be see in the attached file.

Best regards,

Ren Zhang

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

I have one more comment

"The Steric Height (SH) and Dynamic Height (DH) are computed by ... where H is the bottom depth. I do not understand this correction". H should be reference depth. Or  only areas with bottom depth less than 1000m was used?  This contradicts the results in figures 7. This corrected text is now wrong in my opinion. 

Author Response

Thank you very much for your comment. H should be the reference depth. We have corrected it in the text (in section 2.2). 

All of the authors sincerely appreciate you for your kind help to improve our manuscript.