PCLM-D-24-00028

Linear response of deep ocean to a moving tropical cyclone

PLOS Climate

Dear Dr. Furue,

Thank you for submitting your manuscript to PLOS Climate. After careful consideration, we feel that it has merit but does not fully meet PLOS Climate’s publication criteria as it currently stands. Therefore, we invite you to submit a revised version of the manuscript that addresses the points raised during the review process.

You will see that concerns have been raised by reviewer 2 on the applicability of your methodology to realistic ocean models and on how this can be compared with observational in-situ measurements. I would suggest that you try to give a more insightful background to introduce the analysis and make the motivation behind it more explicit, and you provide, as far as possible, a case to justify how the methods apply to a realistic reproduction of ocean currents. Futhermore, please consider reordering the manuscript structure in a more standard way, as requested by both reviewers.

Please submit your revised manuscript by Jun 16 2024 11:59PM. If you will need more time than this to complete your revisions, please reply to this message or contact the journal office at climate@plos.org. When you're ready to submit your revision, log on to https://www.editorialmanager.com/pclm/ and select the 'Submissions Needing Revision' folder to locate your manuscript file.

Please include the following items when submitting your revised manuscript:

• A rebuttal letter that responds to each point raised by the editor and reviewer(s). You should upload this letter as a separate file labeled 'Response to Reviewers'.
• A marked-up copy of your manuscript that highlights changes made to the original version. You should upload this as a separate file labeled 'Revised Manuscript with Track Changes'.
• An unmarked version of your revised paper without tracked changes. You should upload this as a separate file labeled 'Manuscript'.

Guidelines for resubmitting your figure files are available below the reviewer comments at the end of this letter.

We look forward to receiving your revised manuscript.

Kind regards,

Valerio Lembo

Academic Editor

PLOS Climate

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Additional Editor Comments (if provided):

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Reviewers' comments:

Reviewer's Responses to Questions

Comments to the Author

1. Does this manuscript meet PLOS Climate’s publication criteria? Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions? The manuscript must describe methodologically and ethically rigorous research with conclusions that are appropriately drawn based on the data presented.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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2. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously?

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: No

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3. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available (please refer to the Data Availability Statement at the start of the manuscript PDF file)?

The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception. The data should be provided as part of the manuscript or its supporting information, or deposited to a public repository. For example, in addition to summary statistics, the data points behind means, medians and variance measures should be available. If there are restrictions on publicly sharing data—e.g. participant privacy or use of data from a third party—those must be specified.

Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: Yes

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4. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English?

PLOS Climate does not copyedit accepted manuscripts, so the language in submitted articles must be clear, correct, and unambiguous. Any typographical or grammatical errors should be corrected at revision, so please note any specific errors here.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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5. Review Comments to the Author

Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters)

Reviewer #1: This manuscript presents the results of a linear ocean model forced by surface pressures and winds of an idealized tropical cyclone. The study extends previous studies on the linear response of the ocean to a tropical cyclone (TC) by using a more realistic idealized TC, which impacts the horizontal extent of the ocean response. Columnar upwelling is found in both the case of an unstratified ocean and the case of a uniformly stratified ocean, although downstream the effect of intertio-gravity waves become more significant. Barotropic and baroclinic responses to the pressure and the winds are analyzed separately to reveal the sources of sea level changes and inertial oscillations.

The manuscript is very well written and clearly presented. How the study fits into and builds on the existing literature is nicely introduced, and the model setup is understandable. The summary did a good job of emphasizing the key results, and I also appreciated the discussion of the study's limitations.

I am happy to recommend publication of the article, and provide only a few minor comments that the authors can address below:

- The structure of the manuscript is a little odd, with the authors recommending readers to skip a large section in the middle of the paper. I think this would work better as an appendix at the end, with a few key equations moved to S3.1 if they need to be referred back to.

- Figure 4: it is hard to see that two lines are plotted here. Maybe making one of the lines dashed would help.

- Line 831: Wherever you present delta-function responses, you say they are scaled for visualization. Can you provide a justification for this rescaling or is the amplitude essentially arbitrary?

- Line 898: Can you speculate on why the 30km shift is required?

Reviewer #2: Review of:

Linear response of deep ocean to a moving tropical cyclone

By:

Ryo Furue, Yoshio Fukao, and Hiroko Sugioka

Submitted to:

Plos One

The authors present a new modeling approach to analyze the deep ocean response to translating Tropical Cyclones. The methods have merit and the results are interesting, but the paper lacks scope and relevance to the broader community. Also, it is not clear how the model results are corroborated by the observational products, or how much of the results can be transferable to the real world given the highly idealized nature of the experiments. I suggest the authors submit to a more technical domain journal in physical oceanography. If they decide to resubmit to Plos One, I suggest major revisions in terms of presentation, discussion and model experiments to make them more applicable to the broader community.

Major Comments:

Is a stratified model applicable to the deep ocean where density tends to be uniform beneath the thermocline?

The abstract is too technical and lacks context. What is the overarching science questin/problem? What is important about the findings?

Section 1 lacks organization. The introduction begins with a comparison between observations and model results (Figure 1) that have not been described yet. The introduction also lacks context. Again what is the background, motivation, and importance behind the study?

The model experiments are not well described and seem highly idealized. Some model results seem selectively chosen is not clear how (if at all) they the full results are corroborated by the observational data. I suggest more composite analysis that aggregates across storms to identify a storm-induced ocean reponse that can be compared against in situ observations or gridded ocean reanalysis data products.

The results and discussion are quite technical and lack broader perspective. The paper may be better suited for a domain journal in physical oceanography. Or if the author’s resubmit, I suggest broadening the scope relevance of the results to the broader community, perhaps by analyzing sensitivity of model results to TC characteristics such as size, intensity, translation speed, etc., as well as ocean conditions such as background stability mixed layer depth, etc.

L7: “the deep ocean”

L8: “solved by solving” is redundant

L721: The first paragraph is too technical and lacks perspective. State the science problem first.

L119-120: How many years of data, how many TCs are analyzed?

L135: The authors appear to analyze 17 years of TC seasons…? Again, how many storms are included? Are all storms included in the ocean model experiments? What about multiple storms occurring near the same regions or following along similar paths?

L153-154: If the model documentation is not important to the paper, I suggest moving to a supplemental document.

L157-159: How realistic are the conditions “infinite domain” and “horizontally uniform stratification with no motion”. Are these good approximations for the analysis region?

L734: Why choose this particular event? Is the response common across all storms?

L742: Why does w peak at 700 meters depth? Is this a common feature among all storms?

Figure 3 c: The patterns of vertical motion are not convincing. Won’t the yz structure of w depend on the translation speed of the storm? Why not use a composite analysis using more TCs?

L921-924: Is there any evidence of the bottom effects in the real observations, or is this purely a model result?

L1091-1104: Does the SST response show cooling patterns consistent with observations?

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Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: No

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Linear response of deep ocean to a moving tropical cyclone

PCLM-D-24-00028R1

Dear Dr Furue,

We are pleased to inform you that your manuscript 'Linear response of deep ocean to a moving tropical cyclone' has been provisionally accepted for publication in PLOS Climate.

Before your manuscript can be formally accepted you will need to complete some formatting changes, which you will receive in a follow-up email from a member of our team. 

Please note that your manuscript will not be scheduled for publication until you have made the required changes, so a swift response is appreciated.

IMPORTANT: The editorial review process is now complete. PLOS will only permit corrections to spelling, formatting or significant scientific errors from this point onwards. Requests for major changes, or any which affect the scientific understanding of your work, will cause delays to the publication date of your manuscript.

If your institution or institutions have a press office, please notify them about your upcoming paper to help maximize its impact. If they'll be preparing press materials, please inform our press team as soon as possible -- no later than 48 hours after receiving the formal acceptance. Your manuscript will remain under strict press embargo until 2 pm Eastern Time on the date of publication. For more information, please contact climate@plos.org.

Thank you again for supporting Open Access publishing; we are looking forward to publishing your work in PLOS Climate.

Best regards,

Valerio Lembo

Academic Editor

PLOS Climate

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Reviewer Comments (if any, and for reference):

Reviewer's Responses to Questions

Comments to the Author

1. If the authors have adequately addressed your comments raised in a previous round of review and you feel that this manuscript is now acceptable for publication, you may indicate that here to bypass the “Comments to the Author” section, enter your conflict of interest statement in the “Confidential to Editor” section, and submit your "Accept" recommendation.

Reviewer #1: All comments have been addressed

Reviewer #2: All comments have been addressed

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2. Does this manuscript meet PLOS Climate’s publication criteria? Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions? The manuscript must describe methodologically and ethically rigorous research with conclusions that are appropriately drawn based on the data presented.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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3. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously?

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

**********

4. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available (please refer to the Data Availability Statement at the start of the manuscript PDF file)?

The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception. The data should be provided as part of the manuscript or its supporting information, or deposited to a public repository. For example, in addition to summary statistics, the data points behind means, medians and variance measures should be available. If there are restrictions on publicly sharing data—e.g. participant privacy or use of data from a third party—those must be specified.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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5. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English?

PLOS Climate does not copyedit accepted manuscripts, so the language in submitted articles must be clear, correct, and unambiguous. Any typographical or grammatical errors should be corrected at revision, so please note any specific errors here.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

**********

6. Review Comments to the Author

Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters)

Reviewer #1: I appreciate the authors' responses to my comments and can happily recommend publication in PLOS Climate.

Reviewer #2: I appreciate the authors responding to my comments and concerns. The paper is much improved and reads more clearly as a theoretical paper. I recommend acceptance to PlosClimate.

Minor point:

There is an early paper presenting a model of the deep ocean response to a translating hurricane separating out barotropic and baroclinic responses using a highly idealized model (Chang, 1985). I suggest the authors cite and comment on the paper:

https://doi.org/10.1175/1520-0485(1985)015%3C1847:DORTHA%3E2.0.CO;2

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7. PLOS authors have the option to publish the peer review history of their article (what does this mean?). If published, this will include your full peer review and any attached files.

Do you want your identity to be public for this peer review? If you choose “no”, your identity will remain anonymous but your review may still be made public.

For information about this choice, including consent withdrawal, please see our Privacy Policy.

Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: No

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