Freshwater budget in the Persian (Arabian) Gulf and exchanges at the Strait of Hormuz

Edmo J. D. Campos; Arnold L. Gordon; Björn Kjerfve; Filipe Vieira; Georgenes Cavalcante

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0233090

Peer Review History

Original SubmissionMarch 10, 2020
24 Apr 2020 Decision Letter - João Miguel Dias, Editor PONE-D-20-06928 Freshwater budget in the Persian (Arabian) Gulf and exchanges at the Strait of Hormuz PLOS ONE Dear Dr. Campos, Thank you for submitting your manuscript to PLOS ONE. After careful consideration, we feel that it has merit but does not fully meet PLOS ONE’s publication criteria as it currently stands. Therefore, we invite you to submit a revised version of the manuscript that entirely addresses all the points raised by both reviewers during the review process. We would appreciate receiving your revised manuscript by Jun 08 2020 11:59PM. When you are ready to submit your revision, log on to https://www.editorialmanager.com/pone/ and select the 'Submissions Needing Revision' folder to locate your manuscript file. If you would like to make changes to your financial disclosure, please include your updated statement in your cover letter. To enhance the reproducibility of your results, we recommend that if applicable you deposit your laboratory protocols in protocols.io, where a protocol can be assigned its own identifier (DOI) such that it can be cited independently in the future. For instructions see: http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/submission-guidelines#loc-laboratory-protocols Please include the following items when submitting your revised manuscript: A rebuttal letter that responds to each point raised by the academic editor and reviewer(s). This letter should be uploaded as separate file and labeled 'Response to Reviewers'. A marked-up copy of your manuscript that highlights changes made to the original version. This file should be uploaded as separate file and labeled 'Revised Manuscript with Track Changes'. An unmarked version of your revised paper without tracked changes. This file should be uploaded as separate file and labeled 'Manuscript'. Please note while forming your response, if your article is accepted, you may have the opportunity to make the peer review history publicly available. The record will include editor decision letters (with reviews) and your responses to reviewer comments. If eligible, we will contact you to opt in or out. We look forward to receiving your revised manuscript. Kind regards, João Miguel Dias, Ph.D. Academic Editor PLOS ONE Journal requirements: When submitting your revision, we need you to address these additional requirements: 1. Please ensure that your manuscript meets PLOS ONE's style requirements, including those for file naming. The PLOS ONE style templates can be found at http://www.plosone.org/attachments/PLOSOne_formatting_sample_main_body.pdf and http://www.plosone.org/attachments/PLOSOne_formatting_sample_title_authors_affiliations.pdf [Note: HTML markup is below. Please do not edit.] Reviewers' comments: Reviewer's Responses to Questions Comments to the Author 1. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions? The manuscript must describe a technically sound piece of scientific research with data that supports the conclusions. Experiments must have been conducted rigorously, with appropriate controls, replication, and sample sizes. The conclusions must be drawn appropriately based on the data presented. Reviewer #1: Yes Reviewer #2: Yes ******** 2. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously? Reviewer #1: Yes Reviewer #2: Yes ****** 3. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available? The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception (please refer to the Data Availability Statement in the manuscript PDF file). 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 ****** 4. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English? PLOS ONE 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 ****** 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: A nice research work investigating freshwater budget in the Persian Gulf and exchanges at the Strait of Hormuz using HYCOM model. The subject is interesting and within the aims and scope of PLOS ONE. Almost parts of the manuscript have been organized well. In addition, since the Persian Gulf is a hot spot in terms of climate change, more investigations are needed to justify the global warming effects on its hydrodynamics as well as chemical and biological components of the gulf. Therefore, i suggest acceptance after few minor revisions as described below: 1- What do you mean by “Sυ” in ABSTRACT? Please define it. 2- Large numbers of acronyms introduced in the manuscript makes difficulties for the readers to clearly read and understand it. I suggest the authors to remove some abbreviations such as RSW, UAE, and ... . 3- Line 42: Please give full name for SST. 4- The share of Persian Gulf and Red Sea in Indian Ocean water is so little that I think they do not change Indian Ocean water masses as you mentioned in the manuscript. They may affect some small parts of Indian Ocean in northwestern parts. If you do not believe that, please introduce some references to support your conclusion. 5- Section 5: I think it would be better if the authors could summarize this section and move some discussion made in the previous section. Reviewer #2: The paper title “Freshwater budget in the Persian (Arabian) Gulf and exchanges at the Strait of Hormuz” uses a HYCOM model (which is generally used on larger water bodies) to explore the dynamics of the Persian Gulf and it’s inflow/outflow with the Gulf of Oman. The results are not earth shattering by any means – they largely align with results previously published elsewhere – but the compatibility of results does validate the use of the HYCOM approach in this shallow, enclosed sea. The authors do develop some novel findings related to the horizontal component of the exchange at the Strait of Hormuz. Detailed corrections are provided below, and my main comments are these (which are minor issues): 1) remove the term freshwater throughout and replace with normohaline or oceanic; freshwater implies hyposalinity; 2) I think you could do a better job of promoting what novel findings have come out of this research (particularly in the abstract) as many of the findings simply echo already well established patterns; 3) when referring to specific authors in text, add the authors name in the sentence, not just the reference numeral. OVERALL ASSESSMENT: A good quality paper that is suitable for publication after minor edits. L4. OceanS 10. replace what with which. 10: greater depths than XXX m 18: better understand 22: Would suggest replacing reference 13 by adding these two more recent papers which discuss this issue further: Lattemann S, Höpner T (2008) Impacts of seawater desalination plants on the marine environment of the Gulf. In Protecting the Gulf’s Marine Ecosystems from Pollution, Abuzinada A, et al., Editors. Birkhäuser Basel. 191-205. 10.1007/978-3-7643-7947-6_10 AND Sale PF, Feary D, Burt JA, Bauman A, Cavalcante G, Drouillard K, Kjerfve B, Marquis E, Trick C, Usseglio P, van Lavieren H (2011) The growing need for sustainable ecological management of marine communities of the Persian Gulf. Ambio. 40(1):4-17. doi:10.1007/s13280-010-0092-6 23: Sea not Sean 24: Reference that these changes are common in RS? 31: add the name of the author, not just the numeral, as you are referring to a specific author in the text 33: ditto 35: ditto 42: ditto 45: Presumably these changes in SST were suggested to be due to climate change? If so, add that. 46-48: Above you mention that PGW is an important contributor to IO circulation, but nowhere do you say what the potential consequences may be if there are significant changes in PGW input. It would be useful to add a sentence to that effect here. 56-59: If it’s not covered here, I would suggest removing this. You can mention it as ongoing work in the Discussion. 68: salinity, not saline 71: smaller scales of length and time. Not sure what this means. Do you mean space and time? 72: explain what the shamal weather phenomenon is for readers not familiar. 74-94: Summer shamal winds are also important in driving the mid-Gulf eddies and transporting water to the southern basin (see Cavalcante). They also have ecological importance in transporting larvae (see Cavalcante) as well as evaporative cooling of the extremely hot summer sea temperatures (important for all marine fauna) (see Paparella). Cavalcante GH, Feary DA, Burt JA (2016) The influence of extreme winds on coastal oceanography and its implications for coral population connectivity in the southern Arabian Gulf. Marine Pollution Bulletin. 105(2):489-497. doi:10.1016/j.marpolbul.2015.10.031 Paparella F, Xu C, Vaughan GO, Burt JA (2019) Coral Bleaching in the Persian/Arabian Gulf Is Modulated by Summer Winds. Frontiers in Marine Science. 6(205):1-15. doi:10.3389/fmars.2019.00205 107: I would suggest moving the precipitation data after the evaporation data so that things are given in the same order as the previous sentence. 107-115: Some units are in cm yr-1 and others in m3 s-1. It would be useful to get a relative understanding of approx.. how many cm yr-1 these would equate to (for comparative purposes), by calculating the addition of these inputs across the whole area of the Gulf by adding the following at the end of 113: “… , together equating to an approximately XXX cm yr-1 across the Gulf”. 119: replace in the bottom one with: along the bottom. 119: current _ meter 133-4: replace do not allow to infer with: do not allow inference of 138: replace is with: has been 145-6: combine these sentences. 151: add reference numeral 180: remove capital on Even 184: add ‘the’ before output 209: Here and elsewhere in the document you use the term ‘freshwater’ when what you mean is oceanic/normohaline water. Freshwater implies input from precipitation and river runoff to most. This needs to be fixed throughout (particularly in the title and several places in the abstract) as it is misleading. [side note: I did a search, and there are 43 instances where the term freshwater is used in the document; all need to be edited unless specifically referring to fresh (non-brackish) water]. 218: add author name 226: ditto 33: ditto. AND HEREAFTER I will stop asking you to add the authors name when you are referring to a specific author in a sentence; please correct throughout document (i.e. not when it’s at the end of a sentence, but rather when you are, in text, referring to a specific author. 275: Hormuz Fig 3. At least in the figure I am seeing, the diagram is so compressed it’s almost impossible to see the current speed/direction arrows other than in the eddy. Fig 3 legend: What is the mean depth of the top 7 layers? 278: This finding is in keeping with Cavalcante and with Thoppil and Hogan Cavalcante GH, Feary DA, Burt JA (2016) The influence of extreme winds on coastal oceanography and its implications for coral population connectivity in the southern Arabian Gulf. Marine Pollution Bulletin. 105(2):489-497. doi:10.1016/j.marpolbul.2015.10.031 Thoppil P, Hogan P (2010) A modeling study of circulation and eddies in the Persian Gulf. Journal of Physical Oceanography. 40:2122-2134. Fig 4 legend: what is the mean depth of the layers? Fig 5 legend: I assume the solid blue lines represent two standard deviations? If so, say so. Fig 6. What does the red line represent? Add here, and in the later text, refer to it. 342: I’m assuming you have modeled based on a mean depth for 7 km grids in this area, correct? If so, what is the actual difference in bathymetric depth across some of your cells? This will help convey the magnitude of impact bathymetry may have, as that strait area does have some dramatic depth differences on those scales. This would help strengthen this argument. 343-4: to account for the higher frequency of the observations, could you reanalyze that data to give 6 day averages and then compare to see if this resolves the difference between the model and the observation? This would strengthen your argument. 364: MusandAm 364: seen, not seem 365: outward 393-398: There are also various authors out there suggesting that the amount of desalination is having a measurable impact on the salinity of the Gulf (removal of freshwater and discharge of high salinity brines, on the order of many millions of cubic meters daily across the Gulf). While I don’t agree with this hypothesis, personally, it might be something to consider mentioning. 483: spacing issue before numeral 485: where, not were 485 current _ meter 492: replace if with ‘of whether’ ****** 6. 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. If you choose “no”, your identity will remain anonymous but your review may still be made public. Do you want your identity to be public for this peer review?** For information about this choice, including consent withdrawal, please see our Privacy Policy. Reviewer #1: Yes: Roohollah Noori, PhD Reviewer #2: No [NOTE: If reviewer comments were submitted as an attachment file, they will be attached to this email and accessible via the submission site. Please log into your account, locate the manuscript record, and check for the action link "View Attachments". If this link does not appear, there are no attachment files to be viewed.] While revising your submission, please upload your figure files to the Preflight Analysis and Conversion Engine (PACE) digital diagnostic tool, https://pacev2.apexcovantage.com/. PACE helps ensure that figures meet PLOS requirements. To use PACE, you must first register as a user. Registration is free. Then, login and navigate to the UPLOAD tab, where you will find detailed instructions on how to use the tool. If you encounter any issues or have any questions when using PACE, please email us at figures@plos.org. Please note that Supporting Information files do not need this step. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0233090.r001
Revision 1
28 Apr 2020 Author Response REVIEWER #1 1) We inserted a definition for Sv (Sverdrup) in the abstract; 2) Following his suggestions, we reduced to a minimum the number of acronyms throughout the text, leaving only those deemed necessary and with the appropriate and clear definition; 3) As recommended, we inserted the definition for SST (sea surface temperature), at its first appearance in the text; 4) We modified the text, adding references and a few words about the potential importance of the Gulf waters in the Indian Ocean. 5) Section 5 was slightly reduced, following the reviewer’s recommendation. REVIEWER #2 We sincerely acknowledge the excellent review, including detailed editing suggestions and comments throughout the manuscript, which we gladly accepted and contributed to the paper’s readability and quality. Below we itemize these changes, following the list in the reviewer’s comments. As for his major concerns, our response is the following. 1) The freshwater term. We apologize for not having made it clearer. This terminology is used because in the paper it is exactly hyposaline or water with zero salinity. The freshwater we refer to is the amount of water with no salt content that would correspond to the amount of salt transported in the opposite direction. Or, as explained by Drijfhout et al (2011): the equivalent freshwater budget obtained by dividing the equation for salt transport across a vertical section by a reference salinity (the quantity Mt in Eqs. 4 and 5, as explained on lines 265-266 of the original manuscript). To help the reader to better understand it, we included an explanation in the new version of the abstract. 2) We changed slightly the Abstract, to include some words making a better promotion of the most relevant findings. 3) Thanks for pointing out this detail. We revised the complete manuscript and include the names when referring to specific authors. Response to the reviewers #2 general comments: Some of the points, listed below, were just editorial suggestions, typos or other minor comments. They were all accepted, with the appropriate change made in the new version. Lines 4, 18, 22, 23, 24, 31, 33, 35, 42, 45, 46-48, 56-59, 68, 71, 72, 74-94, 107, 107-115, 119, 133-134, 138, 145-6, 151, 180, 184, 218, 226, 233, 275, 278, 364, 365, 483, 485, 492. These are comments that required more elaborate responses. Line 10: “what” was replaced with “which” and the verb was put in the plural (“make”) to agree with the subject: the warmer and more buoyant characteristics of the waters. Line 209: The freshwater issue, explained in Item (1) above Fig. 3: We improved the figure and changed the caption, to include the layer mean depth. Fig. 4: We included the mean depth in the caption and in the main text. Fig 5: The blue lines were explained in the caption. Fig 6: The red line explained in the caption. Line 342: The reviewer is right. The model considers the mean depth in each 7km cell. However, in the vicinity of the point considered, the bathymetric gradient is not high. The major concern is with the bathymetry of a larger area, including the northernmost region of the Arabian Peninsula. The ETOPO5 bathymetry does not resolve it properly (we are currently running a version of the model, with a much higher horizontal resolution (1/48 of a degree) and improved bathymetry (GEBCO 15arcsec bathymetry). Lines 343-4: We apologize for not being clearer. We changed the text to better explain what we meant. Our model products are 6-day averages and the data collected by Johns et al (2003) have higher resolution. We do not have access to that data. In the future, we plan to analyze a higher frequency output of the higher-resolution model’s implementation. Lines 393-398: We gladly accepted the suggestion and included some text with respect to the desalination activity. As a matter of fact, this is part of our ongoing investigation, in which we address the question. Attachments Attachment Submitted filename: Response to Reviewers.pdf https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0233090.r002
29 Apr 2020 Decision Letter - João Miguel Dias, Editor Freshwater budget in the Persian (Arabian) Gulf and exchanges at the Strait of Hormuz PONE-D-20-06928R1 Dear Dr. Campos, We are pleased to inform you that your manuscript has been judged scientifically suitable for publication and will be formally accepted for publication once it complies with all outstanding technical requirements. Within one week, you will receive an e-mail containing information on the amendments required prior to publication. When all required modifications have been addressed, you will receive a formal acceptance letter and your manuscript will proceed to our production department and be scheduled for publication. Shortly after the formal acceptance letter is sent, an invoice for payment will follow. To ensure an efficient production and billing process, please log into Editorial Manager at https://www.editorialmanager.com/pone/, click the "Update My Information" link at the top of the page, and update your user information. If you have any billing related questions, please contact our Author Billing department directly at authorbilling@plos.org. If your institution or institutions have a press office, please notify them about your upcoming paper to enable them to help maximize its impact. If they will be preparing press materials for this manuscript, you must inform our press team as soon as possible and 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 onepress@plos.org. With kind regards, João Miguel Dias, Ph.D. Academic Editor PLOS ONE Additional Editor Comments (optional): Reviewers' comments: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0233090.r003
Formally Accepted
18 May 2020 Acceptance Letter - João Miguel Dias, Editor PONE-D-20-06928R1 Freshwater budget in the Persian (Arabian) Gulf and exchanges at the Strait of Hormuz Dear Dr. Campos: I am pleased to inform you that your manuscript has been deemed suitable for publication in PLOS ONE. Congratulations! Your manuscript is now with our production department. If your institution or institutions have a press office, please notify them about your upcoming paper at this point, to enable them to help maximize its impact. If they will be preparing press materials for this manuscript, please inform our press team within the next 48 hours. Your manuscript will remain under strict press embargo until 2 pm Eastern Time on the date of publication. For more information please contact onepress@plos.org. For any other questions or concerns, please email plosone@plos.org. Thank you for submitting your work to PLOS ONE. With kind regards, PLOS ONE Editorial Office Staff on behalf of Dr. João Miguel Dias Academic Editor PLOS ONE https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0233090.r004

Open letter on the publication of peer review reports

PLOS recognizes the benefits of transparency in the peer review process. Therefore, we enable the publication of all of the content of peer review and author responses alongside final, published articles. Reviewers remain anonymous, unless they choose to reveal their names.

We encourage other journals to join us in this initiative. We hope that our action inspires the community, including researchers, research funders, and research institutions, to recognize the benefits of published peer review reports for all parts of the research system.

Learn more at ASAPbio .