Interplay between Asian Monsoon and Tides Affects the Plume Dispersal of the New Hu-Wei River off the Coast of Midwest Taiwan
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
This seems like an interesting case study of pollutant dispersal under different conditions off the west coast of Taiwan. There are some interesting and useful results here. My major concern would be that the authors do not relate the results from this case study well to any other systems. I would wish to make the following points for consideration by the authors.
The abstract needs rewriting to capture the key novelty presented and summarise the main findings rather more clearly
The English is not quite appropriate for an international audience and needs a comprehensive edit by a first-language English speaker with a subject specialist background. Without this, the impact of the results may be diminshed.
Section 1 is not well written in that it does not give the reader a real sense of purpose behind this work. What are the aims? Is there any justification for omitting the petrochemical works from the analysis (l.57)? Why are these results important (now) and what do they enable us to do that we could not do before? There is a need to mention use of the model here in terms of what this can offer the study as well.
Fig.1: 'topography' should be 'bathymetry' - and depths below what? Chart datum? mean sea level?. This figure would be much clearer with contour lines and with some sense of where the industrial/residential areas are. I do not see the 2 water quality stations referred to in l.103-107 in sufficient detail and I think a blow-up of the harbour is required.
There seem to be too many figures, in my opinion a max.10 figs are warranted here. Authors should try to distil the main points and consider which figures are essential to the story
The content is Sec.3 is the most interesting and thinking about it may be worth focusing the abstract, introduction results etc. around this section alone as this sort of approach would be of greatest interest to other researchers. What would help more in that case would be a stronger justification of the parameters used, why was the model set up and handled in this way, and so on. The model results could then have their own section, to form the basis for the discussion. At present there is a tendency to mix up the results, discussion and conclusions and so readers will find this difficult to follow.
Other comments:
l.37 'forward and backward' - clarify?
l.44 'hoggery' - what is this?
l.78 significance of Lr9132 is not clear, please explain
l.87 what does 'taing' mean?
l.90 some words missing?
l.139-140. Ammonium is shown, but not other data, so it does not seem appropriate to refer to 'nutrients' generally
l.146 Fig.1? or should be Fig.5?
l.168 omit the word 'relatively'
Fig.4 redraft to show area of interest only and take care with colour scales - same colours show different values and is a bit confusing
Fig.7 replace 'cms' with m3/s on axis
Fig.8 text is too small to read - need to think of another way of presenting this info more clearly
Author Response
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
The manuscript presents very well the numerical study on the dispersal of ammonium discharged from the rivers along the coast of midwest Taiwan and it is in line with the targets of the journal. Additional comments on the validity of the boundary settings for the ammonium concentration might be preferable, if any information in the field especially in the rivers could be considered. Other minor comments are followings,
On page 2, Fig,1: The spelling of the river, “Zhuoshui river” is different from the expression in the text of Choshui river.
On Page1, Abstract, and page 2, Line 49: Is the name of the private company, FPC, required in the presentation? It is not so focused on in the study as mentioned in the text.
On page 3, Line 78: What is the number of 9132 after the “Lr”?
On page 3, Line 87: What is the word “taing”?
On page 3, Line 105-108: The location of the monitoring site of H1 and H2 are difficult to identify in the Figure 1. Any modification should be needed in the figure. It is the same for the current meter and tide gauge station explained on the page 5, Line 144.
On page 7, Figure 8: The texts are too small to read in the figures.
On page 10, Line 274: The title of the session should not be “Discussion” but “Results”.
On page 12, Figure 12: The simulated ammonium concentration around the entrance of the port in the “with the CS river” case in Fig 12(a) looks to be slightly lower than the without case in Fig 12(b). If so, does it mean that the river discharged water from the CS could dilute the ammonium around the harbor area?
On page 13, Line 335: The section title may be “Southwesterly”?
On page 14, Line 345: The section title may be “Northeasterly”?
Author Response
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 3 Report
The present paper:” Interplay between Asian Monsoon and Tides Affects the Plume 2
Dispersal of the New Hu-Wei River off the Coast of Midwest 3
Taiwan” deals with the development of a a three-dimensional general circulation model to examine the interplay between Asian monsoon-driven, river-forced, and tide-induced water motion
In general, the paper is interesting and adequate for the journal, but some observations are proposed by this reviewer.
Abstract. Abstract is well presented, nevertheless in this reviewer opinion authors should state the novelty of their work and the interest for readers in this stage.
Introduction. This section presents the problem, but in this reviewer opinion, a deeper state of the art in the presented topic should be described. A bigger number of references should be indicated, proposing how other similar models have studied cases different in different environment conditions. Furthermore, the main objectives of the research should be stated in this section.
Materials and Methods. This section presents main data used for the modelling. In general, the legends of figures are too large. In this reviewer opinion they should be shortened and the content described within the text.
Model Formulation. In this reviewer opinion, this should be a section of Materials and Methods, as it describes methodology. In this reviewer opinion, model is well presented, but the process of calibration of the model should be deeper described. Authors indicate the paragraph “The model is spun up from a motionless ocean, and the model under such initial and boundary conditions works well; cyclical stationary for momentum was reached after approximately 3 days.”
What is “well”? How approximate is “approximately 3 days”?. This must be clarified in a scientific document.
- Discussion
Results are interesting, but no validation process of the model is presented, or compared with any measurement. In this reviewer opinion, this should be indicated. Many figures are present, but no experimental contrast is indicated. This rest reliability to the results, as they are purely numerical.
- Summary and Discussions, In this reviewer opinion, discussion is the previous section, This should be a conclusions section. In this reviewer opinion, the present section should be rewritten as clear sentences indicating conclusions and novelties of the present research, and in which way this could be representative for similar cases study.
Author Response
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Round 2
Reviewer 3 Report
The present version of the paper has included my suggestions
