Potential Influence of Offshore Wind Farms on the Marine Stratification in the Waters Adjacent to China

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The paper presents offshore wind farms influence on marine stratification on China example.

1.     Citations should be numbered in order of 1, 2, 3, and not by the names of authors, as is stated in instructions for authors. For instance, not like (Jiao et al., 2020), but [1].

2.     The same can be said for Reference list, please consult the instructions for authors.

3.     24 or so references are not even close to needed to present the topic in the introduction and literature review

4.     Part before references is not written according to instructions for authors Author Contributions; Funding: Conflicts of Interest: etc.

5.     Literary review should be a subchapter of introduction. There are more than 8000 papers only in WOS on wind farms and wind turbines and you only cited 24. I don’t think Fig 1 and its explanation in text should be a part of introduction, please reread the structure of the paper needed as written in instructions for authors.

6.     In line 154 you stated: the ocean is well mixed; it needs a further explanation

7.     Lines 408 and 414, begin with dataset. Is this the proper way of referencing?

8.     Line 176 text - We used the 2013 version of the World Ocean Atlas (WOA) – please elaborate why this version and not later

9.     Line 200 - it is against the economical principle if the OWFs are too far from the coastal line. -please elaborate what is too close and what is too far from the coast line and how you determinate it.

10.  There are lots of Figures, however, their sources are unknown. If they are your own products, it should be explained how you produced them.

11.  Line 221 Zheng and Pan 2014 are not in Reference list. Please check all the cited literature in text with reference list.

Overall:

-       Introduction is insufficient in literature and some parts of it don’t belong there.

-       The questions paper is answering on are not well developed and clearly presented

-       Methodology and results could be improved

-       References must be improved

-       The main question is whether only two parameters for the research are enough to decide where the wind farm should be positioned or many other parameters of the marine spatial planning should be considered.

 

Best wishes with your paper and further research.

Author Response

Please see the attachment

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

This manuscript estimates the influence of offshore wind farms in marine stratification in the sea coast of China, a phenomenon that drives the nutrients circulation to the upper ocean and regulates ocean carbon fluxes. The study is mainly qualitative and pretends to provide a panorama of the sensitivity of marine stratification to the deployment of offshore wind farms. The paper presents suggestions for the future planning of those offshore wind farms.

I find the paper interesting as a first approximation to the problem and fits into the scope of the journal. Also, the contribution discusses the limitations of the study. Nevertheless, before acceptance the authors have to address properly the following comments and questions.

1.      Although English is reasonable, it is recommended to perform a thorough check of it.

2.       Line 87. “reginal” should be “regional”

3.       Line 128. How do the authors numerically deal with the curl(tau) term? In the text it is said that the wind stress tau is temporally constant, but how does it vary in space? Such curl is prescribed or is it somehow computed?

4.       Line 121. “t < f” but f is a frequency and t is time, so they are not directly comparable. Please, check this expression.

5.       Eq. (3): please, state explicitly that the velocity is equal to that expression. How do you compute the function F(a^2)? Please, give some details or references for obtaining that formula.

6.       Line 197: “was” should be “were”

7.       Fig. 5 and following: please put in the color bar the label of the relevant variable with the corresponding units.

8.       Line 234: what does “nm” mean? Nanometers or nautical miles? If it is nautical mile the agreed symbol is M by the International Hydrographic Organization or NM by the International Civil Aviation Organization. Anyway, they are capital letters to avoid confusion with nanometers (nm)

9.       Line 237. Please remove “in” in “small R in”.

10.   Line 244: describe briefly how the maximum seawater vertical velocity is computed.

11.   Line 324: “dynamic” should be “dynamics”

12.   In all the references, please provide the range of pages or the paper identification number.

Author Response

Please see the attachment

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

All my comments were accepted. I recommend the paper for publishing.

Reviewer 2 Report

Authors have correctly addressed all the raised points