Comment on Blagoveshchenskaya et al. Artificial Ducts Created via High-Power HF Radio Waves at EISCAT. Remote Sens. 2023, 15, 2300

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

I agree with many of the arguments presented by the authors as comments on the recent paper. In particular, I find the claim that incoherent scattering radar data show a 50-80% increase in electron density during ionospheric heating experiments questionable. It would be better if the comments to the recent paper could provide conclusive evidence for this. It would be sufficient to show how the plasma lines have changed in the EISCAT data used in the recent paper (20 October, 28 October and/or 3 November 2013).

Author Response

We thank the reviewer for his or her review.

We have followed the reviewer’s suggestion by analysing the natural plasma line (PL) data for one of the events (18 February 2012) published in the paper. A new section is added (Section 3) describing the analysis the results of which are plotted in a new Figure. The PL for two heater pulses shows a change in frequency which is about an order of magnitude smaller than that expected from the standard ion line analysis presented in the paper by Blagoveshchenskaya et al. 

Please see the attachment for the revised comment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

This comment is well written, relevant and scientifically sound. I recommend immediate publication without revision.

Author Response

We thank the reviewer for his or her review.

Please see the attachment for the revised comment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

The authors point out an important oversight in the conclusions of Blagoveshchenskaya et al. (2023).  

On the other hand, Blagoveshchenskaya et al. provide a significant amount of data.  Perhaps the authors could include comments on whether and how this data could provide additional insights into the ISR ion line enhancements and UHF radio ducting discussed by Senior et al. (2013) and Rietveld et al. (2020). 

Such comments might also be helpful in refining the interpretations and arguments of Blagoveshchenskaya et al. in regard to X-mode heating phenomena.  

Typos and formatting:

line 25
Perhaps there should be no blank line.

line 59
> electron density irregularities of are often created
Perhaps remove "of"?
=> electron density irregularities are often created

line 87
The words in this title are capitalized whereas all other titles are primarily lower case.

lines 87-96
In some citations authors are separate by ",", while in others by ";".  

lines 87-96
DOIs, or better, http://doi.org/ links, could be provided.

Author Response

We thank the reviewer for his or her review.

In the final paragraph of the final section (now headed “4 Discussion”) we have added a few general comments that the data provided by Blagoveshchenskaya et al., in particular the coherent radar data, are valuable information in the search for an explanation of the still mysterious X-mode pumping phenomena.

Line 25: we have added further sections to the comment and re-formatted the comment.

Line 59: Done.

Lines 87-96: We have retained the capitalisation of the original published papers, which varies between journals.

We now use “;” between citation authors.

We have added DOIs at the end of each reference.

Please see the attachment for the revised comment

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf