Matchup Strategies for Satellite Sea Surface Salinity Validation
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report (Previous Reviewer 1)
The authors have addressed most of my primary concerns, and I applaud their efforts to clarify the manuscript. The revised manuscript deserves publication.
Minor suggestion:
In Figure 12, the label in the subplot capital C should be lowercase.
Author Response
Response to Reviewer 1:
Comment:
The authors have addressed most of my primary concerns, and I applaud their efforts to clarify the manuscript. The revised manuscript deserves publication.
Response:
We sincerely thank the reviewer for the time taken to review this manuscript so thoroughly.
Comment:
In Figure 12, the label in the subplot capital C should be lowercase.
Response:
This minor change has been made.
Reviewer 2 Report (Previous Reviewer 2)
The authors have addressed most of my comments, and the manuscript is now much better than before I decided to accept it with minor revisions.
I have only 2 minor comments
1- Please remove ''PSU'' from all your figures as it is used worldwide as a unit for salinity and the Oceanography Society long ago agreed to remove ''PSU'' and not mention the units for salinity as we all know it is sufficient to say in the heading that it is salinity RMSD.
2- Line 381 '' it is 4.1 not 4.2
Good Luck
Author Response
Response to comments by Reviewer 2
Comment:
The authors have addressed most of my comments, and the manuscript is now much better than before I decided to accept it with minor revisions.
Response:
We sincerely thank the reviewer for the time taken to review this manuscript and construct feedback.
Comment:
Please remove ''PSU'' from all your figures as it is used worldwide as a unit for salinity and the Oceanography Society long ago agreed to remove ''PSU'' and not mention the units for salinity as we all know it is sufficient to say in the heading that it is salinity RMSD.
Response:
"PSU" has been removed from all figures.
Comment:
2- Line 381 '' it is 4.1 not 4.2
Response:
The numbering scheme has been corrected.
This manuscript is a resubmission of an earlier submission. The following is a list of the peer review reports and author responses from that submission.
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
Please see attachments.
Comments for author File: 
Comments.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
Title : Matchup Strategies for Satellite Sea Surface Salinity Validation 2
Elizabeth E. Westbrook , Frederick M. Bingham ,* , Severine Fournier , and Akiko Hayashi
The article quantifies the instrumental errors (IE) to determine the accuracy of the satellite. Sea surface salinity (SSS) measurement discrepancies between in-situ and satellite measurements include representation differences (RD) as well as scale and timing issues. These two sources of variation between satellite and in-situ observations are inseparable in real-world data, but validations only aim to quantify IE. The study determined which of the four methods that compare in-situ and satellite measurements minimizes it the most. The methods tested include the all-salinity difference averaging method (ASD), the N closest method (NCLO) which is an averaging method that is optimized for different satellites and regions of the ocean, and two single salinity difference methods - closest in space (SSDS) and closest in time (SSDT).
The paper is well-written and offers some important information as well as ways for correcting Sea Surface Salinity SSS from satellite and in-situ measurements.
My decision is to reconsider the manuscript after Major revisions (control missing in some experiments).
Major Comments
1- The abstract contains many details about the methodology without mentioning your own important results. Please shorten the summary and mention some important results of your own.
2- - I have some reservations in the methodology section:
A- Line 82: We use one year of model output, November 1, 2011 - October 31, 2012, and evaluate only the SSS field'
Why did the authors select this particular time period (i.e. on what basis did the authors make the selection and why only 1 year?) .
B- did the authors use daily averaged model outputs or hourly snapshots. All these details must be described and mentioned in detail in the methodology section
3- Lines 92-97 ‘’'One complication of our method is that the model nominally covers the 2011-2012 period given above, and the SMAP satellite had not yet been launched. It launched in 2015. To get around this, we took the track of the SMAP satellite during the period 1 November 2016 - 31 October 2017, subtracted 5 years, and “flew” the satellite over the model. Thus, the simulated SMAP dataset is created by pretending the satellite was operational during the 2011-2012 period using the dates and locations of the satellite samples in the later period.
What the authors did is totally unacceptable, choosing different years and pretending they are the same year (2016 is not 2011), please use other model outputs for the same year of the satellite (https://marine.copernicus.eu/access-data ), you will find some global ocean models, you can use the hindcast for 2016 for this model
Global Ocean Physics Reanalysis | Copernicus Marine MyOcean Viewer
https://data.marine.copernicus.eu/product/GLOBAL_MULTIYEAR_PHY_001_030/description
The analysis should be redone using the model outputs mentioned above for 2016. Once more, it is unacceptable to use 2011 while acting as if it is 2016.
4- "Simulated Argo Float Data," lines 109–111
How the authors used the ARGO-Float data and which year they used—2011–2012?—is unclear. Once more, you should use 2016 to make all of your methodology SSS satellite compatible.
You can also use the following article to rewrite the description of the ARGO-Float part :
Nagy, H.; Lyons, K.; Nolan, G.; Cure, M.; Dabrowski, T. A Regional Operational Model for the North East Atlantic: Model Configuration and Validation. J. Mar. Sci. Eng. 2020, 8, 673. https://doi.org/10.3390/jmse8090673
Argo. Argo float data and metadata from Global Data Assembly Centre (Argo GDAC). SEANOE 2020.
Roemmich, D.; Johnson, G.C.; Riser, S.; Davis, R.; Gilson, J.; Owens, W.B.; Garzoli, S.L.; Schmid, C.; Ignaszewski, M. The Argo program observing the global ocean with profiling floats. Oceanography 2009, 22, 34–43.
Lumpkin, R.; Centurioni, L.; Perez, R. Fulfilling observing system implementation requirements with the global drifter array. Atmos. Ocean. Technol. 2016, 33, 685–695.
Gasparin, F.; Guinehut, S.; Mao, C.; Mirouze, I.; Rémy, E.; King, R.R.; Hamon, M.; Reid, R.; Storto, A.; Le Traon, P.Y.; et al. Requirements for an Integrated in situ Atlantic Ocean Observing System From Coordinated Observing System Simulation Experiments. Front. Mar. Sci. 2019, 6, 83.
5- Line 309 ‘’Section 4’’ Discussion, it’s results that you're showing not discussion?
so please remove the word discussion from the text. Either create a discussion section only or state the results and discussion right away in Line 222.
6- The Conclusions section is very poor; the authors should provide more details about their key findings as well as additional sources to back up their innovative conclusions (i.e., include more details about the important findings and include more references to proof your novel findings).
7- It is unacceptable to use only 28 references for the entire global study.
