Monitoring and Forecasting the Ocean State and Biogeochemical Processes in the Black Sea: Recent Developments in the Copernicus Marine Service

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

• Conclusion
  • Minor revision
• Summary
  • This paper introduces the products of Black Sea Monitoring and Forecasting Center. This introduction is informative and comprehensive, and would be useful for potential users.
  • Unfortunately, the information on the evaluations of the products does not look very accurate as far as I see figures and tables. I concluded minor revisions because the revisions would not require structural changes of the manuscript. However, the inaccurate numbers significantly lowered the impression of this paper.
• Comments to the evaluation part
  • (1) Line 289 "2°C”
    • about 2°C or 2.1°C because numbers to the first decimal are used in other parts.
  • (2) Line 290 "0.6"
    • not wrong, but the numbers look more smaller.
  • (3) Line 290 "below 0.1"
    • There are 0.11, -0.3 and other values in table 2.
  • (4) Line 291 "0.25 PSU"
    • There are larger numbers at 5-10m in table 3.
  • (5) Line 293 "never greater than 0.1 PSU"
    • At 50-75m in 2020, the bias is 0.14 in table 3.
  • (6) Line 316 "less than 0.05ºC"
    • The absolute value of the bias at 20m is greater than 0.05 in Figure 5a
  • (7) Line 316 "almost zero"
    • I cannot confirm this statement from Figure 5a
  • (8) Line 317 "0.70"
    • about 0.7, but not 0.70 (first decimal accuracy)
  • (9) Line 321 "remain low"
    • What is the standard for "low". Without it, it is subjective word.
  • (10) Line 322 "all during time intervals before 2008"
    • I could not understand this phrase.
  • (11) Figure 9
    • Without more explanations, Figure 9 is uncomprehensive.
  • (12) Line 389 "generally low"
    • It is subjective word.
  • (13) Line 451 "around 4 m"
    • Figure 12
  • (14) Line 458 "slight underestimation"
    • It is a subjective word.
  • (15) Line 466 "Figure 15"
    • Figure 12?
  • (16) Line 470 "7 to 10 cm"
    • Where did these values come from?
• Other comments
  • (17) Line 52 "the seventh"
    • the seventh of CMES or the seventh of the service for the Black Sea?
  • (18) Line 53 "60 active users"
    • 60 people? or 60 groups?
  • (19) Figure 2
    • Characters in the bottom of the figure of TACs are too small to read.
  • (20) Line 127 "con-figuration"
    • --> configuration. There are many such unnecessary "-" in the text. Please check them.
  • (21) Line 142 "a 1-day simulation and a 10-day forecast"
    • What is the difference between simulation and forecast?
  • (22) Line 234 "re-analysis"
    • In the text, sometimes "re-analysis", elsewhere "reanalysis". Please be consistent.
  • (23) Line 314 "REA"
    • What is "REA"?
  • (24) Line 437 "Hs"
    • What is "Hs"?

Author Response

Dear Reviewer, 

we thank you for the helpful comments to our paper. We propose in the following the point-by-point response to your remarks as Word file. 

Please see the attachment. 

Thanks a lot

Kind regards

Stefania 

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Review of “Monitoring and Forecasting the Ocean State and Biogeochemical Processes in the Black Sea: recent developments in the Copernicus Marine Service” by Ciliberti et al.

The paper describes the modelling components and the currently operational implementation of the CMEMS Black Sea Monitoring and Forecasting Center (BS-MFC), including a description of the main operational products and an assessment of their quality and accuracy. In addition, plans for future improvements and developments for the next generation of BS-MFC operational systems are also presented in the conclusions.

The manuscript is of interest for the broad environmental-scientific community, is nicely and logically structured and is suitable for publication in JMSE. However, in my opinion the comments listed below should be addressed by the authors before publication.

Specific comments:

1. The manuscript is logically well structured. However I think that in general readability could be improved by rephrasing / rewording some too long or not very clear sentences, e.g.

• L43 – L46
• L62 – L65
• L104 – L106
• L111 – L117
• L167 – L170
• L209 – L213
• L221 – L222
• L400 – L406
• L429 – L431
• L436 – L439

2. Typo L88: implemented operationally
3. Fig. 2 and L90 – L102: it might improve readability to link the description of the different components in the text with the components in Fig. 2 (e.g. adding some letters to identify each component and refer to those in the text).
4. L108: the model is solved -> I would rephrase it, e.g model’s governing equations are discretised …
5. L121: I would change it to ‘the model includes’
6. L127: con-figuration -> configuration
7. L131: mul-ti -> multi
8. L138 – L139: I would rephrase it.
9. L191: economic: do you mean computationally inexpensive?
10. L193 – L195: I understand what the authors are trying to say, but I would rephrase it, e.g. allows for better representing the impact of the sedimentary compartment on important biogeochemical processes such as sediment oxygen consumption
11. L214 – L215: I would rephrase, e.g. The atmospheric deposition of inorganic nitrogen [27] is also considered. Such a process has a similar order of magnitude as the river inputs and is needed in order to sustain the primary production in the deep basin.
12. L222: I am a bit confused: at L127 it is stated that the ocean model has the Bosporus Strait closed. Now the authors say that it is treated as an open boundary. Could the authors please clarify?
13. L262: As far as I am aware of, wave models as WAM compute the Stokes' drift and pass it to the ocean model which then calculates the Coriolis-Stokes force (e.g. Breivik et al. 2015). Also, usually the wave model passes only the Stokes' drift at the surface while the full wave-induced velocity profile is typically estimated (e.g. Breivik et al. 2015). Could you please clarify whether BS-WAV computes the Coriolis-Stokes force or the Stokes' drift (fully 3D or not)?
14. L263: The authors may want to add a reference to Lewis et al. 2019, which also uses the same approach described here.
15. L264: The authors may want to add a reference to the recent study of Bruciaferri et al. 2021, which assesses and analyses the impact of these three wave related processes on the upper-ocean circulation during extreme events.
16. L288: are these observations independent?
17. L318: from the plot I think it is the permanent halocline, right? This could have an impact on the properties of the CIL, could the authors comment on that?
18. L418: the modelled significant wave height
19. L420: the acronym SWH has not been introduced anywhere.
20. L425: … , on which the bias has a strong influence, and which represents the magnitude of model errors, … Is this sentence needed at all? If yes, I would rephrase it.
21. L433 – L435: Could the authors say a bit more on this? … perhaps with some references.
22. In general, I would increase the resolution of the Figures.

 

References:

Breivik, Ø., K. Mogensen, J.-R. Bidlot, M. A. Balmaseda, and P. A. E. M. Janssen (2015), Surface wave effects in the NEMO ocean model: Forced and coupled experiments, J. Geophys. Res. Oceans, 120, 2973 – 2992, doi:10.1002/2014JC010565.

Bruciaferri, D., Tonani, M., Lewis, H. W., Siddorn, J. R., Saulter, A., Castillo Sanchez, J. M., et al. (2021). The impact of ocean-wave coupling on the upper ocean circulation during storm events. Journal of Geophysical Research: Oceans, 126, e2021JC017343. https://doi.org/10.1029/2021JC017343

Lewis, H. W., Castillo Sanchez, J. M., Siddorn, J., King, R. R., Tonani, M., Saulter, A., et al. (2019). Can wave coupling improve operational regional ocean forecasts for the north-west European Shelf?. Ocean Science, 15(3), 669 – 690. https://doi.org/10.5194/os-15-669-2019

Author Response

Dear Reviewer, 

we thank you for the helpful comments to our paper. We propose in the following the point-by-point response to your remarks as Word file. 

Please see the attachment. 

Thanks a lot

Kind regards

Stefania 

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

I happy with the changes made by the authors.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer 2,

thanks a lot for your positive feedbacks to our proposed changes.

Best regards

Stefania