Mesoscale eddies and submesoscale structures of Persian Gulf Water off the Omani coast in spring 2011

L'Hégaret, Pierre; Carton, Xavier; Louazel, Stephanie; Boutin, Guillaume

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/os-12-687-2016

Articles | Volume 12, issue 3

https://doi.org/10.5194/os-12-687-2016

© Author(s) 2016. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/os-12-687-2016

© Author(s) 2016. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.

Articles | Volume 12, issue 3

Research article

|

20 May 2016

Research article |

| 20 May 2016

Mesoscale eddies and submesoscale structures of Persian Gulf Water off the Omani coast in spring 2011

Pierre L'Hégaret, Xavier Carton, Stephanie Louazel, and Guillaume Boutin

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Final revised paper (published on 20 May 2016)
Preprint (discussion started on 13 Nov 2015)

Interactive discussion

Status: closed

AC: Author comment | RC: Referee comment | SC: Short comment | EC: Editor comment

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RC C1284: 'Review comments on “Mesoscale eddies and submesoscale structures of Persian Gulf Water off the Omani coast in Spring 2011” by L’Hegaret et al.', Anonymous Referee #1, 08 Dec 2015
- AC C1592: 'answer to referee #1', Pierre L'Hégaret, 10 Feb 2016
RC C1476: 'Review/discussion by invited referee', Anonymous Referee #2, 19 Jan 2016
- AC C1596: 'answer to referee #2', Pierre L'Hégaret, 10 Feb 2016

Peer-review completion

AR: Author's response | RR: Referee report | ED: Editor decision

AR by Pierre L'Hégaret on behalf of the Authors (09 Apr 2016) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Referee Nomination & Report Request started (20 Apr 2016) by Piers Chapman

RR by Anonymous Referee #1 (24 Apr 2016)

Suggestions for revision or reasons for rejection

Review comments on manuscript “Mesoscale eddies and submesoscale structures of Persian Gulf Water off the Omani coast in Spring 2011” by Hegaret et al.

This is the second time I review this paper. Compared to the previous version, this paper has been significantly improved both in quality and presentations. This is a well-written manuscript and should be publishable after minor revision. Some of the captions of the figures need more detailed description. Suggest moving some of the descriptions on figures from text to the figure captions, so readers do not need to read through the paper to understand those figures.

Below are my comments:

Line 18 “structurewas” should be “structure was”.
Lines 33-35, suggest rewriting this sentence. Every sea has a bottom. Whose depth is 200 m, the continental shelf? It is strange to say the continental shelf has a constant depth of 200 m.
Line 38, should “bassin” be “basin”?
Suggest adding “×” when showing exponential numbers, such as 3×10^-4 on Line 101.
Need to spell out abbreviations when first used, such as GOGP99, VM-ADCP, MADT etc.
Line 119, suggest rephrasing “due to too shallow a reach”.
Line 128, is the thermistor sensor also sampled every hour?
Lines 177-179, “Their surface temperature were colder than that of the surrounding waters.” This should be right, but cannot be derived from Fig 3. Need more supports for this statement. Same problem when talking about the temperature of A1 in the following paragraph.

When describing scientific findings or features, be consistent with the tense used. Past and present tenses are mixed in the paper, e.g. lines 208-216, “The relative vorticity… provides information…. The most intense features were A1…”. “C1 and A2 standed out ….. Furthermore, this Okubo Weiss parameter indicates.”.

Figure 5d is a nice plot to show the PGW. In the caption, please explain the vertical dished lines with crosses or cycles on them. Same for Figure 6.

Line 260, “byvorticity” should be “by vorticity”.

Lines 313-314, I think just from the density range, it is not convictive enough to conclude that the PGW inside A2 is flowed out of the PG between Jan and May 2010. The density of the PGW residual water might change when advecting from OS into AS. More evidence are needed if the authors really want to hold their ground.

Lines 317-322, I cannot see the upward motion from the cyan and yellow profiles in Figs. 6 and 8. Maybe the authors should rewrite this paragraph to make it clearer. Another effect might cause the similar density structure is mixing. What is the mixing effect compared to vertical advection?

Line 379, I believe the measured shear should be 10 ^-5 s^-1, maybe a typo error.

Line 454, “they uplift of downlift…” ? What does this mean?

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RR by Anonymous Referee #2 (26 Apr 2016)

ED: Publish subject to technical corrections (27 Apr 2016) by Piers Chapman

Short summary

The Persian Gulf produces high-salinity water spreading in the Indian Ocean through the Arabian Sea. Using measurements from the Phys-Indien 2011 experiments and satellite observations, the objective of this study is to follow the pathway and evolution of the salty water outflow in the northwestern Indian Ocean. It is shown that the outflow is strongly influenced by energetic eddies, shredding the water vein into filaments or lenses, and advecting them at their peripheries or in their cores.