Projections of Changes in Atmospheric Conditions Leading to Storm Surges along the Coast of Santos, Brazil

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The authors have created their own future forecast downscaling data for the coast of Santos, Brazil, and analyzed the meteorological fields involved in coastal disasters. The content of the paper is consistent with the purpose of the journal. The content of the article is questionable and there are errors in the text, so I consider it a major revision.

L2: The title of the paper is "Projections of changes in the storm surges" but the content is projecting changes in the meteorological field related to storm surge and inundation disasters. The title and the content do not match, and it is recommended to revise the title.
L95: It would be nice to have a legend that allow the scale of the bay to be ascertained in Figure 1b.
L176: Terminology should be consistent in the paper. mean pressure sea level -> "pressure at mean sea level" or "mean sea level pressure" and so on.
L218: What is reanalysis? ERA5? It is better to degine in advance what the reanalysis refers to.
L247: Figure 3e does not show any area where the wind speed exceeds 16 m/s.
L296: Figure 4b does not show any area where the wind speed exceeds 9 m/s.
L325: Where is precipitation overestimated in Figure 5d? MSWEP has more precipitation than 5-km simulation.
L330: The reason for determining that the precipitation in Figure 5f is consistent with observations is unclear. It may be similar to the difference in distribution between Figure 5b and e.
L368: The description of the shading is wrong.
L363: In Figure 4, the wind speed at 06Z in the reference climate is weak for all patterns, and it can be read that the wind speed distribution at 18Z contributes to the storm surge. In Figure 6, although the wind speed at 06Z is larger, it is only a few m/s and its impact on the storm surge may be weak. Rather, the effect of the weakening of the strong winds in the reference climate may reduce the storm surge.

Author Response

We would like to thank the Reviewers for the valuable comments. Please, find below a point-by-point response to each reviewer’s comment.

Reviewer 1

The authors have created their own future forecast downscaling data for the coast of Santos, Brazil, and analyzed the meteorological fields involved in coastal disasters. The content of the paper is consistent with the purpose of the journal. The content of the article is questionable and there are errors in the text, so I consider it a major revision.

 

L2: The title of the paper is "Projections of changes in the storm surges" but the content is projecting changes in the meteorological field related to storm surge and inundation disasters. The title and the content do not match, and it is recommended to revise the title.

R: Thanks for your suggestion. It was changed to “Projections of changes in atmospheric conditions leading to storm surges along the coast of Santos, Brazil”.

 

L95: It would be nice to have a legend that allow the scale of the bay to be ascertained in Figure 1b.

R: The scale is included in Fig. 1b.

 

L176: Terminology should be consistent in the paper. mean pressure sea level -> "pressure at mean sea level" or "mean sea level pressure" and so on.

R: It was changed in line 175-177. “To detect the storm conditions in the long climate simulations, we apply pattern correlation of the mean sea level pressure of areas 1 and 2, shown in Figure 1a, and the zonal and meridional components of the 10-meter wind over area 1.”

 

L218: What is reanalysis? ERA5? It is better to degine in advance what the reanalysis refers to.

R: We replaced the word “reanalysis” to “ERA5 data”, and the reference of this dataset is now included.

 

L247: Figure 3e does not show any area where the wind speed exceeds 16 m/s.

R: “The RCP4.5 (Figure 3e) scenario projected in Pattern 2 presents a more intense fetch wind compared to the RCP8.5 (Figure 3h) scenario. In RCP4.5, the values are greater than 6 m/s.” in lines 146-147.

 

L296: Figure 4b does not show any area where the wind speed exceeds 9 m/s.

R: The sentence is corrected to: “At 06Z (Figure 4b), the 10-meter winds near the coast exceed 3 m/s.”

 

L325: Where is precipitation overestimated in Figure 5d? MSWEP has more precipitation than 5-km simulation.

R: It was corrected in lines 324-325: “The simulation by 5 km Eta-BESM underestimates the precipitation.”

 

L330: The reason for determining that the precipitation in Figure 5f is consistent with observations is unclear. It may be similar to the difference in distribution between Figure 5b and e.

R: The sentence has been rephrased to: “The Pattern 3 (Figure 5f) simulations reproduce the maximum precipitation along the coast at rates closer to the MSWEP observed precipitation, although still overestimating it.”

 

L368: The description of the shading is wrong.

R: The description is corrected as: “The three local conditions patterns favorable to the occurrence of storm surges:  10-m wind vectors, wind strength difference between future and reference climates (shading), and the PNMM (contours). The average of the future climate is for the period (2031-2060), at 06Z (first line) and 18Z (second line): Pattern 1 (first column); Pattern 2 (second column) and Pattern 3 (third column)”.

 

L363: In Figure 4, the wind speed at 06Z in the reference climate is weak for all patterns, and it can be read that the wind speed distribution at 18Z contributes to the storm surge. In Figure 6, although the wind speed at 06Z is larger, it is only a few m/s and its impact on the storm surge may be weak. Rather, the effect of the weakening of the strong winds in the reference climate may reduce the storm surge.

R: We agree with this comment. So, we added to the text some discussion. “In general, all projections show an increase in wind speed over the ocean at 06Z to climate future, but a reduction at 18Z. As the stronger winds mostly occur at 18Z in the reference climate, this weakening of the winds may suggest a weakening of the storm surges. Pattern 1 presents the most significant changes with respect to the reference climate"

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

Dear authors, congratulations on your manuscript.

The research explores how the existing atmospheric conditions that favor storm surges in Southeast Brazil might be impacted in the future due to climate change. The subject is scientifically relevant and the research has the potential to be published in this journal if some aspects of the manuscript are reviewed.

Overall comments

Check on citation format: for example, instead of "Muis et al. [1] define storm surges", use "[1] define storm surges,..." - review the entire manuscript.

The entire manuscript should be reviewed in order to combine numerous short paragraphs and improve readability.

Abstract 

The text lacks at least one introductory sentence. The authors start directly with the research goal.

Line 15 - The assessment of the atmospheric conditions WILL (change to past)

Keywords

Authors should never repeat words already in the title, please review it.

Introduction 

The text should be restructured, some of the paragraphs are too short and many of them could be merged (e.g. 5th paragraph has only two sentences). 

Also, it could incorporate a more broad literature review, see https://doi.org/10.3390/w12123538 and its list of references, for example: 

https://doi.org/10.3390/w12123538
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-37425-9_2
http://www.jstor.org/stable/40928778
https://doi.org/10.1007/s12403-014-0109-7
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envsoft.2019.03.001
https://doi.org/10.1007/s00382-019-04778-1

Materials and Methods

Change the text to past (line 76)

The study region

The first paragraph is a little bit repetitive since Santos and its importance is already been mentioned in the Introduction. 

Figure 1 needs better resolution and bigger labels, especially the coordinate grid in Figure 1(b). 

Figure 1 could have a few extra landmarks and a label for the Atlantic Ocean. 

Figure 1(b) needs an extra layer with administrative boundaries.

Eta Model

In between lines 101 and 103 the word "model" appears too many times

The text should also be restructured, too many short paragraphs make it to very fluid to the reader. See lines 108-111, 134-136, and 137-142, for example.

Atmospheric patterns in storm surge

Figure 2 needs better resolution and the citation in the caption needs to be reviewed.

It is very important for the authors to inform in this section what are the actual atmospheric patterns that favor storm surges in a quantitative way rather than only qualitative.

Results and Discussion

The authors need to provide more information regarding the necessary atmospheric conditions that favor storm surges and explain how this analysis can be/was validated. The reader should not be obligated to read Sondermann [6] in order to understand this article. 

There is only ONE citation in the entire section, which is another research conducted by the same author. How this research improves the understanding of atmospheric conditions that favor surges in South Brazil? How does it compare to the existing literature?

I’m sorry for any potential harshness and I wish the authors the best.

Author Response

We would like to thank the Reviewers for the valuable comments. Please, find below a point-by-point response to each reviewer’s comment. In black are the questions done by reviewers. In blue are the answers done by author.

# Reviewer 2

Dear authors, congratulations on your manuscript.

The research explores how the existing atmospheric conditions that favor storm surges in Southeast Brazil might be impacted in the future due to climate change. The subject is scientifically relevant and the research has the potential to be published in this journal if some aspects of the manuscript are reviewed.

Overall comments

Check on citation format: for example, instead of "Muis et al. [1] define storm surges", use "[1] define storm surges,..." - review the entire manuscript.

The entire manuscript should be reviewed in order to combine numerous short paragraphs and improve readability.

R: Thanks for your comment. We reviewed the manuscript and improved it.

Abstract

The text lacks at least one introductory sentence. The authors start directly with the research goal.

Line 15 - The assessment of the atmospheric conditions WILL (change to past)

R: We rewrite the abstract.

Keywords

Authors should never repeat words already in the title, please review it.

R: The keywords have been replaced to: Eta Model; Climate Change; Coastal Hazards

Introduction

The text should be restructured, some of the paragraphs are too short and many of them could be merged (e.g. 5th paragraph has only two sentences).

Also, it could incorporate a more broad literature review, see https://doi.org/10.3390/w12123538 and its list of references, for example:

https://doi.org/10.3390/w12123538

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-37425-9_2

http://www.jstor.org/stable/40928778

https://doi.org/10.1007/s12403-014-0109-7

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envsoft.2019.03.001

https://doi.org/10.1007/s00382-019-04778-1

R: Thanks for your suggestion! We included some studies about storm surges in Santos City, in the Southeast of Brazil.

Materials and Methods

Change the text to past (line 76)

R: It was done.

The study region

The first paragraph is a little bit repetitive since Santos and its importance is already been mentioned in the Introduction.

R: We decided to maintain it only in study region.

Figure 1 needs better resolution and bigger labels, especially the coordinate grid in Figure 1(b).

Figure 1 could have a few extra landmarks and a label for the Atlantic Ocean.

Figure 1(b) needs an extra layer with administrative boundaries.

R: Thanks for your suggestions! We improved Figure 1.

Eta Model

In between lines 101 and 103 the word "model" appears too many times

R: It was solved.

The text should also be restructured, too many short paragraphs make it to very fluid to the reader. See lines 108-111, 134-136, and 137-142, for example.

R.: Thanks for your suggestion! The manuscript was restructured.

Atmospheric patterns in storm surge

Figure 2 needs better resolution and the citation in the caption needs to be reviewed.

It is very important for the authors to inform in this section what are the actual atmospheric patterns that favor storm surges in a quantitative way rather than only qualitative.

R: Figure 2 was produced only to illustrate the atmospheric patterns favorable to storm surges that were found by Sondermann et al. (2023). These patterns are described in the analysis of this figure in a quantitative way.

Results and Discussion

The authors need to provide more information regarding the necessary atmospheric conditions that favor storm surges and explain how this analysis can be/was validated. The reader should not be obligated to read Sondermann [6] in order to understand this article.

There is only ONE citation in the entire section, which is another research conducted by the same author. How this research improves the understanding of atmospheric conditions that favor surges in South Brazil? How does it compare to the existing literature?

R: We understand your point of view. However, in this present work, we evaluate the performance of the Eta model in reproduce the patterns found by Sondermann et al. (2023) in the present climate and, we detected these patterns in the future climate.  This work is the continuation of the study by Sondermann et al. (2023), but, now we are using numerical modeling. Because of this, the present study is compared several times with Sondermann et al. (2023). In addition, these patterns are described in the subsection  “2.3. Atmospheric patterns in storm surge”. We improve the discussion in order to compare it with other studies.

 

I’m sorry for any potential harshness and I wish the authors the best.

 

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

I have confirmed that the review comments have been addressed.