Numerical Modeling of Atmospheric Temperature and Stratospheric Ozone Sensitivity to Sea Surface Temperature Variability

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The authors of the manuscript have done a important work to study the influence the influence of the SST on the atmosphere up to 60 km. I understand that the material is extensive, but the article turned out to be too voluminous and difficult to understand. I advise you to place some of the figures in a repository (for example, zenodo.org) and shorten the text of the manuscript, for example, figures of spatial structures can be moved in repository (figures 3, 5,10 and choose one of the figures 11 or 12 for illustration in the article). Also in the manuscript there are a lot of figures with estimates of changes between El and La phases and trend estimates of changes in parameters. But there is a lack of assessment of the statistical significance of these differences. It is necessary to evaluate the statistical significance of the results obtained, including in Conclusion.

Minor notes:

Line 118: It is not clear from the explanation why the frequency of SSW is not reduced during La Niña. You can remove the attempt at explanation and leave the link, or try to explain the reason clearly.

Line 137: Pacific Subarctic Oscillation. What is this? Pacific Decadal Oscillation or something else?

Figure 3 and all the arguments about the influence of SST on air temperature are quite obvious and not new. You can refer to other works and shorten the text. Moreover, the blue area(~68N 140E) raises questions.

Line 364: duplicated [46, 47].

Line 352: What is HSP?

Line 409: ... geography of Antarctica. May there be topography?

Figure 13 top left - select the scale so that the maximum difference is visible. And yes, I would like to understand how significant this difference is.

Line 840-844: sentence is too long, try splitting it into two. And please stick to the previous terminology “Arctic Amplification”.

Lines 869, 871,872: ENJC? ENYUK?

Lines 903-906: This process also contributes to the strengthening of the SSW. What process? Does increased ozone at high latitudes increase SSW?

Lines 911, 913: SPL?

And for my taste, Conclusion is also long, try to squeeze out the main results without details.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer

            Thank you very much for taking the time to review this manuscript and useful comments, remarks, and suggestions. Please find the detailed responses below and the corresponding revisions highlighted in the re-submitted files.

General Comments:

1. I advise you to place some of the figures in a repository (for example, zenodo.org) and shorten the text of the manuscript, for example, figures of spatial structures can be moved in repository (figures 3, 5,10 and choose one of the figures 11 or 12 for illustration in the article). 

Thank you for pointing this out. We agree with this comment. Therefore, we have shortened the text of the article and transferred some figures to appendices.

2. Also in the manuscript there are a lot of figures with estimates of changes between El and La phases and trend estimates of changes in parameters. But there is a lack of assessment of the statistical significance of these differences. It is necessary to evaluate the statistical significance of the results obtained, including in Conclusion.

Thank you for pointing this out. We agree with this comment. Therefore, we have estimates of correlation coefficients.

3. Minor notes.

Thank you for pointing this out. We agree with this comments. Therefore, we transferred Fig. 3 to the appendix, removed duplications and corrected other errors that were kindly pointed out by the reviewer

S.Smyshlyaev, A.Jakovlev  and Vener Galin

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Review of “Numerical Modeling of Atmospheric Temperature and stratospheric Ozone Sensitivity to Sea Surface Temperature Variability ”by Y. Smyshlyaev et al.

 

The authors use the INM-RSHU CCM model, with MERRA2 analysis data assess that the SST corresponding to El Niño and La Niña SO phases on stratospheric process and the ozone layer. The results show that the SST with El Niño phase contributed to an increase in polar stratospheric ozone. In contrary, the SST with La Niña phase decreased the total column ozone. Analysis is enough to support the results. Propose to publish the paper after the minor revisions listed below:

Line 303-304. “...the tropical zone...” give the latitude range.

Figure 3. right panel, the reason for the extreme negative temperature anomaly region around (120E-150E, 65S).

Line914. the conclusion is too long, it is hard to get the key points.

Comments on the Quality of English Language

Minor edit is fine for this paper.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer

            Thank you very much for taking the time to review this manuscript and useful comments, remarks, and suggestions. Please find the detailed responses below and the corresponding revisions highlighted in the re-submitted files.

Comments:

1. Line 303-304. “...the tropical zone...”give the latitude range.. 

Thank you for pointing this out. We agree with this comment. Therefore, latitudinal ranges for the tropics have been added where applicable to tropical areas.

2. Figure 3. right panel, the reason for the extreme negative temperature anomaly region around (120E-150E, 65S).

Thank you for pointing this out. We agree with this comment. Therefore, we added explanation, that which may be due to the blocking of the polar region by the meridional circulation for most of the year, starting in spring, the intensification of the zonal wind at its boundary and the cooling of the lower polar stratosphere (Fig. 3) .

3. Line914. the conclusion is too long, it is hard to get the key points.

Thank you for pointing this out. We agree with this comment. Therefore, we have reduced conclusion and highlight key issues.

S.Smyshlyaev, A.Jakovlev  and Vener Galin

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Please find the attached file for the reviewer's comment.

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Comments on the Quality of English Language

The quality of writing is very poor and unprofessional. Often repetitive sentences in the introduction, incomplete phrases, have made the manuscript difficult and uninteresting for reading. It has to be written extensively with simple yet scientifically correct sentences.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer

            Thank you very much for taking the time to review this manuscript and useful comments, remarks, and suggestions. Please find the detailed responses below and the corresponding revisions highlighted in the re-submitted files.

Comments:

1. There are a lot of similar kind of conceptual flaws thoroughly found in the paper. Moreover, the introduction portion has been exaggerated unnecessarily by repeating same lines by frequent intervals (for example, L61-71).

Thank you for pointing this out. We agree with this comment. Therefore, we have completely revised the article and tried to remove duplications and inconsistencies.

2. Coming to the result portion, it is hardly clear what the authors meant to establish.

Thank you for pointing this out. We agree with this comment. Therefore, we have completely redesigned the interpretation of the drawings.

3. The figure interpretation is vividly wrong.

Thank you for pointing this out. We agree with this comment. Therefore, we have reduced conclusion and highlight key issues.

4. There are some abbreviations whose full form has not been given.

Thank you for pointing this out. We agree with this comment. Therefore, we have we checked all the abbreviations and tried to decipher them.

5. Precisely, I would recommend that the authors should first understand what they are actually trying to establish and follow up the investigation accordingly.

Thank you for pointing this out. We agree with this comment. Therefore, we tried to build the logic of the article and pay attention to understanding physical and chemical processes.

S.Smyshlyaev, A.Jakovlev  and Vener Galin

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The authors are suggested to take the review comments seriously and pay time to correct the manuscript.

Please find the attached file for detailed comments.

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Comments on the Quality of English Language

Qualify of English is still not up to the mark and suitable for publication. Some of the sentences sound gibberish and grammatically wrong. Extensive editing is required.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer

            Thank you very much for taking the time to review this manuscript and useful comments, remarks, and suggestions. Please find the detailed responses below and the corresponding revisions highlighted in the re-submitted files.

Comments:

1. However, the quality of English is still under the publication standard.

Thank you for pointing this out. We agree with this comment. Therefore, we performed English language editing for the entire manuscript. If necessary, we will continue to improve the English language in the final version if the manuscript is accepted for publication.

2. L21: The reason for Antarctic polar stratosphere for being cool throughout the year is SST change due to global warming - Can they justify? Do they have any idea about thermal wind equation?

Here, the results of the performed model experiments with the CCM (Fig. 7) were presented, which demonstrated that the zonal wind for the 2010s boundary conditions increased, while the temperature and ozone content decreased. The description of the results in Fig. 7 provides a scientific understanding of this effect. However, to eliminate misunderstandings, we have excluded this statement from the abstract.

3. L26: Global warming results in Arctic polar vortex weakening in winter – sentences like this are totally unscientific. The polar vortex gets weakened due to SSW which a dynamic phenomenon.

Again, the results of the performed model experiments with CCM were presented here, which demonstrated that in addition to the influence of SSWs, which the reviewer quite correctly mentions, the long-period trends create conditions for the acceleration of the zonal wind at the Arctic polar vortex boundary during winter (Fig. 7). In the description of the results in Fig. 7 provides a scientific understanding of this effect. One of the new results of this paper is the suggestion that in addition to the rapid destruction of the polar vortex as a result of SSW, long-term changes can also create conditions for polar vortex weakening.

4. First line of the introduction – “Climate changes are accompanied by changes in sea surface temperature (SST), which, in turn, affect climatic changes.” This type of sentence formation looks unsuitable for any standard journal like Climate. It is vague pointing out each of the lines like this.

We have paraphrased this sentence, although we never understood what exactly the reviewer did not like.

5. The introduction is still unnecessarily exaggerated. It’s required to be edited and shortened with proper phrasing.

Thank you for pointing this out. We agree with this comment. Therefore, we shortened the introduction.

6. Coming to the scientific output, the model outputs have been compared with the MERRA2 reanalysis. However, there are a lot of real-time observations available for ozone and temperature. It is suggested to show the variations of the same for the mentioned phases, which will be useful to establish the deliverables.

Thank you for pointing this out. We agree with this comment. Therefore, we added a comparison of modeling results with SBUV satellite data for ozone.

7. I am unhappy to find that the authors overlooked my suggestion of rectifying the figure labels. The x and y-axes are still not labeled. For example, in figure 1, what is x axis and what is y-axis? Lat-Lon should be mentioned in all the figure labels, and mentioning altitude doesn’t give idea whether it is hPa or km/m. It should be easily recognizable from the figure what the authors are trying to depict.

Thank you for pointing this out. We agree with this comment. Therefore, we corrected all figures in accordance with this comment.

8. The quality of the figure 1 should also be improved.

Thank you for pointing this out. We agree with this comment. Therefore, we improved the quality of the figure 1.

9. A table should be included with the list of the El Niño and La Niña events during the period of study.

Thank you for pointing this out. We agree with this comment. Therefore, we added a table with the list of the El Niño and La Niña events during the period of study.

10. I have serious concern about figure1. As per the figure caption, the right panel shows the difference between the neutral enso phase SSTs during the beginning and end of the 3 periods. The title of the figure says it is the trend. How the authors claim it to be trend? How have they derived this?

Thank you for pointing this out. We agree with this comment. Therefore, we corrected figure 1 and excluded mention to trend.

11. For figure 3, I prefer to see the seasonal variation of the anomalies (dT, dO3 and dU) separately for the El Niño and La Niña events rather than for the differences. Similarly for the figure 4 and 5, it is suggested to show the plots separately for both the type of events.

We have replaced differences with anomalies in all figures, although we do not think this has improved the presentation of the results.

12. Overall, I don’t find much novelty in the current version of the manuscript as most of the statements are already studied and reported. It is still not suitable for the publication.

In our opinion, the paper presents several new results concerning the analysis of the separate influence of short-period and long-period SST changes on polar processes.

S.Smyshlyaev, A.Jakovlev  and Vener Galin

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf