Baseline Climatology of the Canary Current Upwelling System and Evolution of Sea Surface Temperature
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsReview on “Baseline Climatology of the Canary Current Upwelling System and Evolution of Sea Surface Temperature ”
The manuscript investigates the baseline and its time evolution of the SST in the Canary Current Upwelling System region. The spatial variation of the SST in this region is also revealed. The results are interesting and important for us to understand the variability of ocean states as well as the dynamics in coastal regions in the background of climate change.
However, the structure and the manner of presentation of the manuscript need to be revised so that it could be fulfill the requirement of publishing. Therefore, I would suggest the major revision for this manuscript.
Major comments:
1. The structure of the manuscript as well as the manner of writing are very different from other scientific papers and need to be revised and adjusted. That is, in the whole Results section (Section 3), the authors just simply listed all the figures they made, but did not describe any detail on the figures and the results they got. Then, they gave a lot of description on the results of the figures in Discussion section (Section 4). However, by convention, the results section should be the main part for the authors to narrate the main findings of their study. The discussion part would be an additional part where some of the results need to be discussed further. Therefore, I would suggest the authors reorganize the results and discussion parts following the convention of scientific papers.
2. Most of the figures were shown without any axis. Please redraw the figures.
Minor comments:
1. L57-58: Please add some references which addressed the fact that “upwelling regions are highly productive for ma- 57 rine ecosystems, aquaculture, and fisheries”.
2. L60: “Curry” -> “Current”
3. L74-75: Please add some references addressing the relationship between the upwelling and NAO.
4. Figure 1. It is better to show the boundary of (b) in (a) with a rectangle box.
5. Figure 1. The axis label of (a) and (b) are different. Please unitize them.
6. L117: costal -> coastal
7. L156-190: Please add a paragraph to summarize the general idea of this study inferred from review on former studies and the main structure and scientific problems of this study
8. L209: not clear how to calculate SST from the vertical layers “from the surface to 20 cm depth”. Is it the average temperature within these layers?
9. L279: norm -> normal
10. Figure 3: cannot see any axis of the plots
11. Table 1: it is better to discuss why the bias of Gran Canaria is very different from the other 3 stations?
12. Figure 4: it seems meaningless to show the climatogical SST in an independent figure here. Furthermore, the colors of this figure are hard to read. It is better to add some contour lines to make the distribution clearer.
13. L401-411: again, please add some description on the results so that the readers could understand the information of the figures shown by the authors.
14. L484: it is wired to show the interannual variability by a plot with just monthly variation in Figure 11. I understand that the grey lines are the variation of the SST in each year. However, as the lines are overlapped each other, it is hard to tell the interannual variability by these grey lines.
15. Figure 11, it is interesting that the SST of the year with lowest (average) SST (blue lines) are much higher than the other years in August and September. Is there any explanation for this?
16. L734: wrong form of the authors for this reference.
Comments on the Quality of English LanguageThe language of this manuscript is good and easy to understand.
Author Response
Please see the attachment
Author Response File: 
Author Response.docx
Reviewer 2 Report
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsThe paper should address and incorporate the following points:
How does the study acknowledge the non-uniformity of sea surface temperature (SST) increase induced by global climate change, specifically in the context of the Canary Current Upwelling System (CCUS)?
The work needs to discuss What variations in SST trends are observed between offshore and nearshore regions in the CCUS, and how do these variations relate to the effects of upwelling processes?
In what ways does the study address the limitations of using remotely sensed SST data, and how are these data validated with in-situ measurements to establish a reliable climatological baseline for the CCUS?
How does the study recognize the significance of changes in SST within the Canary Current Upwelling System and their potential impacts on fisheries and tiny pelagic species?
What importance is attributed to the study area, considering the upwelling phenomenon off the west coast of the Iberian Peninsula and year-round upwelling off the northwest coast of Africa, and how does it contribute to the socio-economic and biological significance of the region?
It needs to enrich the work by citing the following two papers:
https://doi.org/10.1175/1520-0442(2002)015<1609:AIISAS>2.0.CO;2 10.1109/INDIN51773.2022.9976090
How could the study address uncertainties in understanding the relationship between alongshore winds and recruitment variability south of 36°N, considering the lack of adequate data in that region?
In what ways could the research further investigate and quantify the impacts of changes in SST on small pelagic species' reproductive strategies and adaptability over the long term?
How might the study account for potential variations in the nutritional quality of feed due to changes in phytoplankton abundance, considering the potential imbalances resulting from changes in SST?
How might the study account for potential confounding factors or interactions that could influence the observed SST changes, and what statistical or modeling approaches could enhance the robustness of the findings?
What collaborative efforts or interdisciplinary approaches could be employed to integrate socio-economic considerations more comprehensively into the study, recognizing the interconnectedness of climate changes and human activities in coastal regions?
Comments on the Quality of English Language
Extensive editing of English language required
Author Response
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
Round 2
Reviewer 1 Report
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsThe authors have addressed most of my comments in the first round review. I have a few of minor comments on the revised manuscript.
1) L183-190. I suggest the authors write this paragraph following the convention of most of the scientific papers.
2) Figure 5. I still could not find any quantified information on the interannual variability from those grey lines. I suggest the author plotting time series of the SST anomalies for each year successively rather than overlapping them together.
Author Response
We thank you very much for taking the time to review our manuscript again. We have revised the paper according to your suggestions as follows:
1) Lines 183 - 194 have been rewritten to follow the convention of most scientific papers.
2) Figure 5 (as well as figure 11) have been redrawn to show the 95% confidence of the monthly means for each year from the 1982 - 2021 dataset instead of the grey lines overlapping each other. We hope this makes it more clear for the reader in quantifying the interannual variability.
Reviewer 2 Report
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsSome points need from the first revisions needs to be added in the article:
I asked you in the first revision to add the following but you did not:
How could the study address uncertainties in understanding the relationship between alongshore winds and recruitment variability south of 36°N, considering the lack of adequate data in that region?
In what ways could the research further investigate and quantify the impacts of changes in SST on small pelagic species' reproductive strategies and adaptability over the long term?
It needs to enrich the work by citing the following paper:
10.1109/indin51773.2022.9976090
Comments on the Quality of English LanguageModerate editing of English language required
Author Response
We thank you very much for taking the time to review our manuscript again. We appreciate your comments and suggestions. We have revised the paper according to your comments as follows:
How could the study address uncertainties in understanding the relationship between alongshore winds and recruitment variability south of 36°N, considering the lack of adequate data in that region?
We have answered this question in the conclusions section of our paper (lines 705 - 716).
In what ways could the research further investigate and quantify the impacts of changes in SST on small pelagic species' reproductive strategies and adaptability over the long term?
We have also answered this question in the conclusions section and integrated it with the answer to the previous question (lines 705 - 716).
It needs to enrich the work by citing the following paper:
10.1109/indin51773.2022.9976090
Thank you for your valuable suggestion to reference the paper on combining machine learning methodologies for the prediction of SST. Your suggested paper, focusing on the use of LSTM and Gaussian Process Regression for SST prediction in the Red Sea, indeed presents a novel and insightful approach to SST modeling. However, after careful consideration, we believe that the specific focus and methodology of our study on the Canary Current Upwelling System (CCUS) do not directly align with the core aspects of the suggested paper. Our study primarily utilizes high-resolution remotely sensed SST data validated with in-situ measurements to establish a climatological baseline and analyze SST anomalies in the CCUS region. The main objective is to understand the climatological dynamics of the CCUS and its variability, rather than developing or implementing new predictive modeling techniques for SST. Therefore, while the suggested paper is undoubtedly valuable in the field of SST prediction, its focus on predictive modeling using a hybrid machine learning approach is somewhat tangential to the core objectives and methodologies employed in our study.
We appreciate the opportunity to consider your suggestion, and it has certainly provided food for thought regarding potential future directions for research. However, for the current scope and focus of our study, we have opted to not include this reference.
