Effect of Local Winds on Salinity Intrusion in the Columbia River Estuary

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The paper is entitled: “Effect of local winds on salinity intrusion in the Columbia River estuary”. The topic is very interesting, and I believe it has significant importance, as the results can be useful beyond the studied river. The paper is generally well written and shows the authors have dementated a high quality of research and robust knowledge of the topic. Nevertheless, there are some corrections and modifications which can improve the quality of the work. I hope the authors find my comments helpful and use them to prepare a higher-quality paper.

 

Major issues:

In the introduction section you have talked about the studied river, which is understandable, but has this question been addressed elsewhere? I strongly recommend adding a paragraph or two discussing the literature on this river, focusing on local winds on salinity intrusion, and showing this is not just the studied river where you make a contribution, but with the question itself. Interestingly, the two first paragraphs of the discussion section are mainly narrowing down the research gap, which can be brilliant for the literature review section. I would recommend bringing these to the first section and kicking off the discussions by focusing on your work and results while keeping the nice critical comparison you made in the third paragraph and afterward.

I did not see any major issues in the results section. You have put pieces of the puzzle beside each other there. I also liked the discussion section but I would recommend putting aside your conclusions in a separate section.  Using bullet points for conclusions is recommended here, but feel free to use other styles if you like. I liked the fact that you highlighted your research limitation and raised the flag for further research in the last paragraphs of the discussions, well done!

 

Minor issues:

As a general comment, the figure formatting does not look good. All figures shall use the same font as used in the text, axes titles are not adjusted as in many cases they are very small. If you are using a legend, try to use the same location for all subfigures in one figure, for example in Figure A.1 legends look unprofessional as legends clash the graph, and each one is in a different location, please revise.

Figure 1 seems low quality, can you provide better quality for this?

Figure 1 legend:  bring (“a”and “b” before what they represent, for example: Map with (a)text..., (b)text, please apply this elsewhere in figure legends.

 

In Material and method: I think the first paragraph is not well written. Until the last sentence, it gave me a feeling that it is a literature review type. You have said : “Many numerical studies have been carried out to characterize X. Z and Y utilized the 3D unstructured grid model SELFE [27] etc..”  what I suggest is : in this paper model X was used, then talk about the basis of the model, and how it was validated. You can omit the name of authors here, and say X,Y,Z was done on the model [reference].

For example in the following sentence :

“A detailed skill assessment for both high and low river discharge conditions showed that the model captures the magnitude and phase of the tidal salinity intrusion with good accuracy (except during late spring/early summer high river discharge and neap tide conditions due to excessive numerical

mixing).”

It can be rewritten as:

The model accuracy to capture the magnitude and phase of the tidal salinity intrusion was done through…

This is just an example, please use your own word to rewrite this. You can merge the second paragraph into the first one as well.

 

Line 138: “just a few.” Is not quantified. Omit this and say there were(are) 3 stations.

The “Observations and wind forcing” section is unclear. You said “ data are available only for limited periods”, please explain further here

 

 

 

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Review report on the paper titled “Effect of local winds on salinity intrusion in the Columbia River estuary”

In this paper the authors proposed a simulation work for finding the effect of wind on the salinity intrusion in an estuary. Overall, the manuscript is well written, the modeling exercise result is presented elaborately with sufficient explanation. However, some sections need to be re-written to completely understand by the reader. Following are some issues, which the authors need to address. More specific comments are made in the appended manuscript.

1.       L 31 to 63 should be moved to "Materials and Methods" section.

2.       The authors need to improve the “introduction” section. The background of the study and the necessity of the proposed research need to be established based on critical review of related literature. Currently, an insufficient number of papers are reviewed, which could not establish the reason of conducting the study.

3.       “Section 2: Materials and methods”- The authors may include a table showing, "input and output parameters" and data sources. Some information exists, but dispersed and not easy to follow.

4.       Figure 2 does not add much critical information and can be presented as Appendix.

5.       Please separate Conclusions from the Discussion section

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

The authors have addressed all issues raised by the reviewer.