Kelvin–Helmholtz Waves on the Magnetopause at the Lunar Distances under Southward IMF: ARTEMIS Observations

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

I am glad to evaluate such a manuscript based on data analysis of Artemis. It sounds interesting and new. Unfortunately,  the evidences  shown in it are insufficient to get the conclusions. In my oppion, the manuscript are not suitable for publication at its present form. See the report document for more details. 

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Based on in-situ ARTEMIS observations, the authors report an observation event of the Kelvin-Helmholtz (KH) waves at the Earth’s distant tail (near the lunar orbits) magnetopause during southward interplanetary-magnetic-field (IMF). The KH waves have been considered as one of the most important mass and energy transfer processes at the magnetopause. Although the KH waves have been frequently observed at the magnetopause during northward IMF, there are only a few observations of the KH waves during southward IMF, and hence the KH wave physics has been much less explored for the southward IMF. The event shown in this paper is the first observation of the KH waves at the distant tail magnetopause during southward IMF. Since this topic is new and important in exploring the magnetopause physics, I think this paper is basically suitable for publication. However, there are some major/minor points that would be addressed before the publication. The detailed comments are shown in the attachment.

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

See the report, please.

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

The authors have significantly improved the manuscript from the previous version. I recommend the manuscript for publication after considering the following suggestions.

1) Line 26: "reconnection" --> "reconnection at low-latitude" would be more appropriate.

2) Line 27:  "the magnetopause" --> "the low-latitude magnetopause" would be more appropriate.

3) Line 58: "Nakamura et al. [17]"  is only one of the series of papers which present the MMS event. I would suggest the following sentence. 

"Recently, similar KH wave signatures were observed at the dusk flank magnetopause during southward IMF by the MMS spacecraft [17-19]."

4) Line 175: The authors should explain how the k-vector is estimated. 

5) Line 175: The authors should explain more quantitatively how largely the left term exceed the right term. This point is important to know the KH waves can be evolved into the vortex motion. 

6) Line 186: Although my previous comment wrongly indicated the paper as Nakamura et al. 2020, the correct reference would be Nakamura et al., Physics of Plasmas. 2022 that is newly shown in Introduction.

7) Line 209: "The wavelength for this event is" --> "The wavelength for this event can be estimated as" would be more appropriate.

8) Lines 267-279: As newly shown in Introduction, it would be better to add recent MMS observations by Basl et al. 2022 and Nakamura 2022, since the present results are reasonably consistent with these papers in addition to Hwang et al. and Yan et al.

9) English corrections: 

Line 10: "(IMF). ."doubled periods 

Line 13: "find  KH" unnecessary space

Line 113 "whichis" space needed

Line 138: "P1observed" space needed

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.docx