Impact of intraseasonal wind bursts on sea surface temperature variability in the far eastern tropical Atlantic Ocean during boreal spring 2005 and 2006: focus on the mid-May 2005 event

Herbert, Gaëlle; Bourlès, Bernard

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/os-14-849-2018

Articles | Volume 14, issue 4

https://doi.org/10.5194/os-14-849-2018

© Author(s) 2018. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/os-14-849-2018

© Author(s) 2018. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 14, issue 4

Research article

|

27 Aug 2018

Research article |

| 27 Aug 2018

Impact of intraseasonal wind bursts on sea surface temperature variability in the far eastern tropical Atlantic Ocean during boreal spring 2005 and 2006: focus on the mid-May 2005 event

Gaëlle Herbert and Bernard Bourlès

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Final revised paper (published on 27 Aug 2018)
Preprint (discussion started on 04 Oct 2017)

Interactive discussion

Status: closed

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

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RC1: 'Review for “Impact of intraseasonal wind bursts on SST variability in the far eastern Tropical Atlantic Ocean during boreal spring 2005 and 2006. Focus on the mid-May 2005 event.” by Gaëlle Herbert and Bernard Bourlès', Anonymous Referee #1, 16 Nov 2017
- AC1: 'Response to Referee 1', Gaelle Herbert, 23 Feb 2018
RC2: 'Reviewer Comments', Anonymous Referee #2, 22 Nov 2017
- AC2: 'Response to Referee 2', Gaelle Herbert, 23 Feb 2018
RC3: 'Review of "Impact of intraseasonal wind bursts on SST variability in the far eastern tropical Atlantic Ocean during boreal spring 2005 and 2006. Focus on the mid-May 2005 event" by Berbert and Bourles', Anonymous Referee #3, 11 Dec 2017
- AC3: 'Response to Referee 3', Gaelle Herbert, 23 Feb 2018

Peer-review completion

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

AR by Gaelle Herbert on behalf of the Authors (14 Mar 2018) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Referee Nomination & Report Request started (15 Mar 2018) by Mario Hoppema

RR by Anonymous Referee #1 (27 Mar 2018)

Suggestions for revision or reasons for rejection

Review for revised version “Impact of intraseasonal wind bursts on SST variability in the far eastern Tropical Atlantic Ocean during boreal spring 2005 and 2006. Focus on the mid-May 2005 event.” by Gaëlle Herbert and Bernard Bourlès

I appreciate the authors’ effort in addressing the issues raised in my review. I find the revised manuscript to be improved, but there are still a number of things that need to be taken care of before publication.

In particular, I find that my major comments 1 and 2 and specific comments 1, 4, 5, 8, 10, 11, and 12 have been adequately addressed. Regarding the other comments, I still have the following concerns:

A) With respect to the different time scales (related to former major comment 1 and specific comment 2 and 7), I am still having difficulty to sort out the relationship between the intraseasonal and interannual anomalies. The authors did not make it easier for me with their replies that completely mix up the time scales (AC to major comment 3 states that Fig. 4 shows interannual anomalies, the figure caption itself says intraseasonal; AC to specific comment 2 talks about interannual anomalies, but the manuscript change is about intraseasonal variations). I would strongly advise the authors to define and cleanly separate the time scales and ideally draw a conclusion how the intraseasonal episodes lead to the interannual cold event in 2005.

B) line 196/197: The highest temperatures occur more towards boreal spring than winter (former specific comment 3). The AC states that the text has been modified, but it has not.

C) I appreciate that Figures 3 and 4 have been revised. However, I still find it impossible to identify the individual dates of cooling episodes and wind bursts that are given in the text in those figures (former specific comment 6). Maybe you could highlight those dates by vertical lines or arrows?

D) Regarding the seasonality of the upwelling (lines 205 to 208, 228), I believe that the passage of coastal Kelvin waves plays an important role as well (e.g. Ostrowski et al., 2009).

E) Despite some improvements, many of the figures are still very small with labels that are hard to read. I also find that the “rainbow” colormap is not ideal for showing anomalies and would advise to use a colormap centered around white or very light colors instead. In Fig. 11b, the colormap is not very instructive either. For Fig. 12, the caption is not consistent with the labels of the subplots regarding the order of wind stress and radiation. Figure 2 is still mentioned for the first time in the text after Figure 3.

F) There are also still a number of language issues. I have made some suggestions below (quite a few of them not for the first time, I believe…) but the manuscript would probably benefit from a careful read-through by a native English speaker.

Technical corrections/ comments concerning the writing:
line 12: “southerly wind anomalies” instead of “the southerly winds strengthening”
line 21: “made the event as a decisive event”: please rephrase (“made this event so special” maybe?)
line 38, 714: associated WITH, not to
line 40: “is regulated”
line 49: “as a vector” please rephrase
line 52: important
line 70/71: please refer to map shown in Fig. 2
line 87: data sets
line 93, 742, 748: AT play, not IN
line 94: “very low thermal inertia” please rephrase
line 164 and 166: removing FROM
line 194 and throughout the manuscript : IN Fig. x, not ON
line 200: reproduces … well
line 222: “lower” instead of “weaker”
line 247: are shown
line 275: evident
line 289: “generally” instead of “globally”
line 418: upwelling Kelvin waves were generated
line 424: intraseasonal wind events
line 424: eastern part
line 425: a few weeks
line 439: the coastal area
line 443: have been made for
line 474: “also” instead of “besides”
line 613: “What made” or “Why was”, not “Why made”
line 623, 626: explain RADSW
line 665: “low SST” instead of “weak SST”
line 713: in the early onset

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RR by Anonymous Referee #3 (30 Mar 2018)

Suggestions for revision or reasons for rejection

Second review of “Impact of intraseasonal wind bursts on SST variability in the far eastern tropical Atlantic Ocean during boreal spring 2005 and 2006. Focus on the mid-May 2005 event” by Herbert and Bourles

The authors have made many improvements to the manuscript, including clarification of some statements in the text and figures that are easier to understand and correspond better to what is presented in the text. I have a few minor points to be addressed before the manuscript is ready for publication.

line 248: I don’t see the April 22-24 cooling event in Fig. 4a. The others that you list are visible.

line 289: “Globally” is not the right word to use here. I would simply delete it.

line 340: You discuss the shallower thermocline being more conducive to anomalous cooling, which is probably true for vertical mixing induced by current shear and wind. However, the heat capacity (i.e., mixed layer depth) can also have a big impact on the change in SST for given heat flux, and it is not necessarily correlated with thermocline depth. I suggest checking to see if MLD follows Z20, or at least adding a disclaimer that Z20 is not necessarily the same as MLD.

Fig. 7: I suggest reversing the y axis in Fig. 7e,k so that shallow Z20 anomalies are up instead of down.

line 416: How does Ekman convergence reinforce upwelling? Do you mean divergence?

Fig. 9: It’s a little confusing to have the longitude on the y axis (longitude goes across, not up and down like latitude). Consider putting it on the x axis and making columns instead of rows.

line 580: Change ‘humidify’ to ‘huimdity’

There are numerous mostly minor language/grammatical errors that need to be corrected. It’s not a major thing, but they are distracting when reading the text.

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RR by Anonymous Referee #2 (06 Apr 2018)

ED: Reconsider after major revisions (09 Apr 2018) by Mario Hoppema

ED: Referee Nomination & Report Request started (22 Jun 2018) by Mario Hoppema

RR by Anonymous Referee #1 (04 Jul 2018)

AR by Anna Wenzel on behalf of the Authors (22 Jun 2018) Author's response

ED: Publish subject to technical corrections (11 Jul 2018) by Mario Hoppema

AR by Gaelle Herbert on behalf of the Authors (19 Jul 2018) Author's response Manuscript

Short summary

The impact of boreal spring intraseasonal wind bursts on sea surface temperature variability in the eastern tropical Atlantic in 2005 and 2006 is investigated. The cooling events induced by southerly wind bursts are modulated by local and remote forcing. A particularly strong wind event and a strong cooling occurred in mid-May 2005. It appears as a decisive event in the West African monsoon onset. This study emphasizes the need to further document and monitor the South Atlantic region.