Investigation of Daytime Total Electron Content Enhancements over the Asian-Australian Sector Observed from the Beidou Geostationary Satellite during 2016–2018

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments on Remote Sensing-909150 (861798 v3)

This is the resubmitted, revised version of a previously rejected manuscript remotesensing-861798. Besides the technical flaws, the major writing problems remain. I suggest the authors think over my comments below really hard and find the way out. I won't provide my answers because that may be subjective or just spoil the authors, and they won't learn anything from this submission. The authors may hate me at the moment but I strongly believe that I am doing the right thing because the authors certainly will write more papers in the future, they must improve their writing proficiency efficiently to accurately convey their findings to readers. Fake science usually originates from the misunderstanding between authors and readers.

The best knowledge may not be gained by another person teaching you. It has to be done on your own usually.

My current comments are as follows:

--- Many sentences have basic grammatical errors because the authors cannot distinguish the subject of a sentence, and readers should be misled as a result.

--- Articles of nouns are absent or misused. Check the dictionary as needed.

--- All the essential punctuation marks are missing. This is a serious grammatical flaw.

--- Figures need to be inspected cautiously. For example, something is missing in Fig. 3.

--- Figure captions are nonstandard and nonprofessional. In particular, there is a special convention in using articles in the figure caption. Refer to the papers published in high standard journals to have some idea if the MPDI "Instructions for authors" doesn't help.

Author Response

Comments on Remote Sensing-909150 (861798 v3)

This is the resubmitted, revised version of a previously rejected manuscript remotesensing-861798. Besides the technical flaws, the major writing problems remain. I suggest the authors think over my comments below really hard and find the way out. I won't provide my answers because that may be subjective or just spoil the authors, and they won't learn anything from this submission. The authors may hate me at the moment but I strongly believe that I am doing the right thing because the authors certainly will write more papers in the future, they must improve their writing proficiency efficiently to accurately convey their findings to readers. Fake science usually originates from the misunderstanding between authors and readers.

The best knowledge may not be gained by another person teaching you. It has to be done on your own usually.

Response: We are grateful to referees for the review of our paper.  We have reviewed the grammatical structure of the manuscript and hope they are satisfactory. It will also be helpful if the reviewer can help to highlight some of the observed mistakes and error for appropriate corrections to be made. The responses to the comments can be found below.

My current comments are as follows:

--- Many sentences have basic grammatical errors because the authors cannot distinguish the subject of a sentence, and readers should be misled as a result.

Response: We have tried to review the grammatical structure of the manuscript to make it more readable and interesting to the readers. However, we do not guaranteed 100% accuracy, such cases of errors may be those that can easily be ignored.

--- Articles of nouns are absent or misused. Check the dictionary as needed.

Response: The previous response also applies to this instance.

--- All the essential punctuation marks are missing. This is a serious grammatical flaw.

Response: The first response also applies to this instance.

--- Figures need to be inspected cautiously. For example, something is missing in Fig. 3.

Response: We observed that the sub-figure labels were missing. This has been included in the Figure 3 of current revision.

--- Figure captions are nonstandard and nonprofessional. In particular, there is a special convention in using articles in the figure caption. Refer to the papers published in high standard journals to have some idea if the MPDI "Instructions for authors" doesn't help.

 Response: The MPDI "Instructions for authors" and other published articles that were cited in this manuscript were consulted and it’s really difficult to understand what the reviewer meant by ‘special convention in using articles in the figure caption’. It will be appreciated if this can be highlighted and we will sincerely make necessary corrections.

Reviewer 2 Report

Author Response

The article is interesting and has a rather brief introduction, but I could consult other newer works in the field. The description of the methods is interesting and sometimes quite rigorous. What is the original contribution of the authors in this article? In this paper which has a large number of pages and the results, discussions and conclusions are presented on a number of 18 pages. What were the data used for and whether did they perform the processing taking into account the calculated or simulated values? Were the data studied by the authors collected or were they borrowed from their legal owners? The authors' contribution is important and of special significance.

Response: The authors appreciate the reviewer for the comments made on the study in this manuscript. We have also been able to add more text to the introductory part (Lines 70-76) and concentrated more on the analysis of the quiet geomagnetic condition. The original contribution of this study deals with the statistical study of TEC enhancements during geomagnetic storm and the recurrence of these enhancements during the recovery phase. Previous studies have only dealt with one or two individual storms in addressing TEC enhancements during the recovery phase.

The data used in this study were obtained from (http://gnss.stern.ac.cn/) and processed into vertical total electron content (vTEC). A brief highlight has been given on this in the section 2 under data and methods.

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments on Remote Sensing-909150 (861798 v3)_v2

The manuscript has improved a little, but the major flaws remain. I will give the authors some food for thought about what they are doing.

1. In the abstract, could the authors answer a simple question like below: What is the subject of the sentence read "The number of days of TEC enhancements under quiet geomagnetic condition were analysed."? Then check the dictionary to find out the number of the subject (singular or plural). Finally, verify the consistency between subject and verb. Check the dictionary is a must because you used very tricky nouns in the sentence.

2. In Fig. 2, do you call a square mixed with a cross magenta circle? This is the first time I have ever learned.

3. Do you really read at least one good paper published in high standard journals? If you do, compare your figure captions with that shown in there to see the differences.

4. Do you have your manuscript proofread by a good English speaker familiar with the manuscript content?

Author Response

1. In the abstract, could the authors answer a simple question like below: What is the subject of the sentence read "The number of days of TEC enhancements under quiet geomagnetic condition were analyzed."? Then check the dictionary to find out the number of the subject (singular or plural). Finally, verify the consistency between subject and verb. In Fig. 2, do you call a square mixed with a cross magenta circle? This is the first time I have ever learned. 
2. Do you really read at least one good paper published in high standard journals? If you do, compare your figure captions with that shown in there to see the differences.

1. Do you have your manuscript proofread by a good English speaker familiar with the manuscript content?

Response: We agreed with the conclusion from the academic Editor “I agree with the authors that the revision of one reviewer is not focused on the scientific content but only on the grammar/language. So, the manuscript can be accepted after a grammar revision.”  In this version, we revised the paper and checked the grammar carefully, and hopefully this version should be good enough for publication.

This manuscript is a resubmission of an earlier submission. The following is a list of the peer review reports and author responses from that submission.

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The submitted manuscript describes the analysis of STEC between one Beidou satellite (GEO2) and five stations located in eastern Asia/Oceania between parallels 20S and 35N. The analyses is rather quantitative and employs simple numerical techniques like averaging and comparing TEC enhancements to the averaged TEC signal. The number of plots is in my opinion too large in comparison to the scope of the work and can be decreased. The main disadvantages of the study are however: too diffused objective of the study, very general conclusions and first of all – extremely strange structure of the work. The most confusing is section 4 - Discussion (almost 4 pages). The reader expects there discussion focused on the specific findings from this study, whereas he finds a very general discussion on TEC perturbations with citations and listing of other studies and other research findings. Such discussion can only take place in the introduction and should be limited to the investigated problems as precisely, as possible.

Generally, the objective of the work is interesting and the study is worth continuation. It needs,  however, clear precise goal, extension of the data (also validation), change of structure (sec. 4 !) and precise conclusions. I can advise major revision if the authors are able to address these 4 points seriously (listed as first 4 points below in major comments).

Major comments:

1. First sentence of the abstract indicates that the authors focus on “statistical analysis  of daytime ionosphere’s disturbances and the degree to which these disturbances may be attributed to forcing from above and below the F2…” This sentence reveals that objective is general and open for any finding. The authors use words: “appeared to be – line25” , “may be – l27” and “can be – l32” in the abstract.  This proves that conclusions are uncertain. The advice is then to narrow the objectives and list proved/validated results avoiding “can be” and similar phrases.
2. TEC enhancements are at the level 10 TECU (or 30%). This size of change can be analyzed using every other source: GIMs – especially these highly accurate like UQRG, TEC from GPS and GLONASS signals, altimetry, DORIS and probably others. The mentioned sources can provide wide spatial coverage and more extended results and conclusions. However, the authors do not use other sources even for validation purposes. Another question is why the only Beidou satellite used here is GEO02? Usually, in scientific works, the researchers use as much data as possible to help solving the problem, or at least the amount which is necessary to thoroughly analyze and validate. The work must be extended: eg. to many Beidou satellites and one validation data. The use of only one satellite provides extremely uncertain/unvalidated results – maybe this is the reason of your uncertain conclusions…
3. Section 4. The discussion about existing knowledge, especially a general one, references can be done only in the introduction. The other form of the paper is of course a review paper, but review also should start from old things and finish on the new ones.  Section 4 includes extremely huge number of phases of type: “may”, “may not also”, “shows that the probability”, “possibility exist”, “can affect”, should have”, “may also”, suggested”, “could have” and many other. The discussion should be precisely about YOUR results, and it is used to publish the findings in scientific journals, but not the suspicions. Therefore, please discuss YOUR results in discussion, move ONLY CLOSELY RELATED things to introduction,  and avoid suspicions and general discussion as much, as possible. This is not a correct scientific language. If you write about TEC enhancements – refer to things related with them,  not to general knowledge about all TEC anomalies if your study does not analyze them.
4. Conclusions: you reveal again that you focus on the “statistics..”. The techniques are described before. Say what you wanted to find only, and what is found for sure or almost for sure. This conclusions should present main findings precisely.  Lines 528-529 are incorrect linguistically.
5. The authors aim at the assessment of seasonality of TEC behavior (they assess annual, seminannual, monthly and other components). This is usually analyzed with the use of spectral tools like wavelets, SVD or FFT and presented as power spectra. It is used to apply these tools in today’s scientific practice for these purposes.
6. You use bar/stem plot in Fig 2a-e. Linear would be better, because stems/bars hide the noise, which can be interesting to observe.
7. There are large number of figures describing limited number of info. Please consider merging Fig5 with Fig 7, and Fig8 with Fig9. Does percentage description really shows more than numbers of obs.? Maybe it is simply redundant and makes reading more difficult? Table 2, in my opinion can be better replaced by Figure.
8. Use clear and self-explanable captions for Figures, e.g. Fig. 7. – it has the same unit on vertical axis, but you show “dependence” in Fig7, whereas you give “variations” in Fig. 5 (occurrence in Fig 8). Please provide clear captions, i.e. say what physical quantity (not relation/behavior) you present in every subfigure. Also, yellow bars reach the figure box,  the reader may be not sure if they fit to the box or a part of them is hidden..

Minor Remarks

1. Table 1 can be skipped: Fig. 1 shows the same. It is enough.
2. EIA acronym is not explained.
3. Line 105, avoid trivial sentences: eg. about median properties
4. 541 – OJ – validation – I still don’t know where is validation in your work… Usually it is done with independent data.
5. Figures 3, 5, 7, (check all) have no  subfigure numbers. The captions do not describe the contents. This must be done. All numbers/items must be explained in the captions. Do you have coordinates in the titles, close to the station names? These coords. can be skipped maybe..

Example language mistakes:

The language is readable, but needs additional proofreading. Only abstract and some sentences in introduction (the reorganizing of the structure will change many parts of the text, but please include also serious language editing of new version)

(Line) 23 “… equinoctial preference and without systematic latitudinal dependence.” - equinoctial preference, and there is no evident systematic latitudinal dependence (for example)

32 “…changes during the post-storms period can be observed and with possible effects of modulating forcing..” - changes during the post-storms period can be observed together with possible effects of modulating forcing…

38 “ The consequent changes during ionosphere’s disturbances are of importance to space physics research, orbit design of artificial satellites and in practical application…”  - The changes resulting from ionospheric disturbances are of importance in space physics research, orbit design and in practical application…”

42 “ are driven by different sources, which are broadly classified under those due..” – I’m not sure what you had in mind, but please change the part “under those”

51 “which are normally” – which is usually

57 “ comprise three phases…” – comprise of three phases

58 “During each phase of a geomagnetic storm different processes and interactions are at play depending on the prevalent geophysical and interplanetary conditions” - Different processes and interactions are at play, depending on the prevalent geophysical and interplanetary conditions during each phase of a geomagnetic storm.

64 “Hence it is rare for the ionosphere to experience large increase in ionization density during recovery phase relative to the initial and main phases most especially when the solar, interplanetary and geomagnetic conditions are quiet” – Hence it is rare for the ionosphere to experience a large increase in the ionization density during the recovery phase, related to the initial and main phases, and particularly when the solar, interplanetary and geomagnetic conditions are quiet. – anyway, consider less composed sentence to be more clear…

67 “How this interaction takes place is still a subject of…” – The study of this interaction is still a subject of…

136 “conspicuous” – evident?

And many other.  Language correction necessary in new version

Summarizing, I can advice major revision with second round of review,  however the authors must change the structure and extend data sets and data analyses.

Author Response

REVIEWER 1

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The submitted manuscript describes the analysis of STEC between one Beidou satellite (GEO2) and five stations located in eastern Asia/Oceania between parallels 20S and 35N. The analyses is rather quantitative and employs simple numerical techniques like averaging and comparing TEC enhancements to the averaged TEC signal. The number of plots is in my opinion too large in comparison to the scope of the work and can be decreased. The main disadvantages of the study are however: too diffused objective of the study, very general conclusions and first of all – extremely strange structure of the work. The most confusing is section 4 - Discussion (almost 4 pages). The reader expects there discussion focused on the specific findings from this study, whereas he finds a very general discussion on TEC perturbations with citations and listing of other studies and other research findings. Such discussion can only take place in the introduction and should be limited to the investigated problems as precisely, as possible.

Generally, the objective of the work is interesting and the study is worth continuation. It needs, however, clear precise goal, extension of the data (also validation), change of structure (sec. 4!) and precise conclusions. I can advise major revision if the authors are able to address these 4 points seriously (listed as first 4 points below in major comments).

Response: We appreciate the thorough work that has been done by this reviewer in pointing out areas that need to be improved on in this manuscript. We have carefully addressed some of the concerns raised by the reviewer and give reasons why some suggestions couldn’t be revised. The response to each point can be found below; 

Major comments:

1. First sentence of the abstract indicates that the authors focus on “statistical analysis of daytime ionosphere’s disturbances and the degree to which these disturbances may be attributed to forcing from above and below the F2…” This sentence reveals that objective is general and open for any finding. The authors use words: “appeared to be – line25”, “may be – l27” and “can be – l32” in the abstract.  This proves that conclusions are uncertain. The advice is then to narrow the objectives and list proved/validated results avoiding “can be” and similar phrases.

Response: We thanked the reviewer for the suggestions under this first point and appropriate corrections have been made both in the abstract and introduction parts. More so, the objectives have been narrowed down to investigating the recurrence of TEC enhancements during the recovery phase of geomagnetic storms.

The parts with ‘appeared’ and ‘may be’ have been removed on lines 29 and 31 respectively.

2. TEC enhancements are at the level 10 TECU (or 30%). This size of change can be analyzed using every other source: GIMs – especially these highly accurate like UQRG, TEC from GPS and GLONASS signals, altimetry, DORIS and probably others. The mentioned sources can provide wide spatial coverage and more extended results and conclusions. However, the authors do not use other sources even for validation purposes. Another question is why the only Beidou satellite used here is GEO02? Usually, in scientific works, the researchers use as much data as possible to help solving the problem, or at least the amount which is necessary to thoroughly analyze and validate. The work must be extended: eg. to many Beidou satellites and one validation data. The use of only one satellite provides extremely uncertain/unvalidated results – maybe this is the reason of your uncertain conclusions…

Response: As touching the validation, especially using GPS and GLONASS data would have proved helpful but we choose not to consider them in this study considering that other GNSS are not well represented over the region of study. Moreover, the Beidou GEO data are better than the GPS and GLONASS data for the purpose of this study.

 We also limited the study to one GEO satellite because in an earlier study (https://doi.org/10.1029/2017JA025166) which was cited in this manuscript, the results of about 4 GEO satellites showed similar variation. To avoid complications in the presentation of results (which can obscure the main results), only GEO 2 was chosen owning to its good data coverage. The observed TEC enhancements during 7-8 September 2017 geomagnetic storm which is the main motivation of this study was peculiar to the Asian-Australian sector, hence we intend to conduct this study first, over the Asian-Australian sector and in a later study to see the possible results from other sectors for comparison.  

1. Section 4. The discussion about existing knowledge, especially a general one, references can be done only in the introduction. The other form of the paper is of course a review paper, but review also should start from old things and finish on the new ones.  Section 4 includes extremely huge number of phases of type: “may”, “may not also”, “shows that the probability”, “possibility exist”, “can affect”, should have”, “may also”, suggested”, “could have” and many other. The discussion should be precisely about YOUR results, and it is used to publish the findings in scientific journals, but not the suspicions. Therefore, please discuss YOUR results in discussion, move ONLY CLOSELY RELATED things to introduction, and avoid suspicions and general discussion as much, as possible. This is not a correct scientific language. If you write about TEC enhancements – refer to things related with them, not to general knowledge about all TEC anomalies if your study does not analyze them.

Response: The above points on section 4 have been corrected by removing parts of the discussion section, which are not germane to the objectives of the study. The use of suggestive terms has also been avoided in the text and the previous study was interpreted in the light of results obtained from this study. 

1. Conclusions: you reveal again that you focus on the “statistics.”. The techniques are described before. Say what you wanted to find only, and what is found for sure or almost for sure. This conclusions should present main findings precisely.  Lines 528-529 are incorrect linguistically.

Response: The conclusion section has been re-written, presenting only the main findings (Lines 422-434).

1. The authors aim at the assessment of seasonality of TEC behavior (they assess annual, semiannual, monthly and other components). This is usually analyzed with the use of spectral tools like wavelets, SVD or FFT and presented as power spectra. It is used to apply these tools in today’s scientific practice for these purposes.

Response: The real aim of the above comment in Figure 2 was to describe the TEC variation over the five stations during the three years. Hence the annual and semiannual variations were mentioned because they were observed from the time series of the TEC observations.

1. You use bar/stem plot in Fig 2a-e. Linear would be better, because stems/bars hide the noise, which can be interesting to observe.

Response: The linear plot was used in Figure 2 and not bar/stem plots.

1. There are large number of figures describing limited number of info. Please consider merging Fig 5 with Fig 7, and Fig 8 with Fig 9. Does percentage description really shows more than numbers of obs.? Maybe it is simply redundant and makes reading more difficult? Table 2, in my opinion can be better replaced by Figure.

Response: Figure 8 in the previous version has been removed and Figure 9 is now retained as Figure 8 in the new manuscript and the discussion is based on percentage occurrence only (see lines 274-306). Figures 5 & 7 were retained as individual figures. This is a result of the role each figure plays in the organization of the text and the overall flow of the presentation of the results. Table 2 has been replaced by Figure 9.

8. Use clear and self-explanable captions for Figures, e.g. Fig. 7. – it has the same unit on vertical axis, but you show “dependence” in Fig7, whereas you give “variations” in Fig. 5 (occurrence in Fig 8). Please provide clear captions, i.e. say what physical quantity (not relation/behavior) you present in every subfigure. Also, yellow bars reach the figure box, the reader may be not sure if they fit to the box or a part of them is hidden.

Response: The captions of Figures 3, 5-8; have been re-written according to the physical quantities presented. The vertical axis of the plot on the right column of Figure 7 has been extended to about 20 units more than the previous plot.

Minor Remarks

1. Table 1 can be skipped: Fig. 1 shows the same.

Response: The Table 1 of the manuscript has been removed.

1. EIA acronym is not explained.

Response: Full meaning of equatorial ionosphere anomaly (EIA) has been added on line 555.

1. Line 105, avoid trivial sentences: eg. about median properties.

Response: This has been removed from the manuscript. (See line 125) 

1. 541 – OJ – validation – I still don’t know where is validation in your work… Usually it is done with independent data.

Response: This option has been removed from the section.

1. Figures 3, 5, 7, (check all) have no subfigure numbers. The captions do not describe the contents. This must be done. All numbers/items must be explained in the captions. Do you have coordinates in the titles, close to the station names? These coords can be skipped maybe.

Response: Subfigure numbers have been included on Figures 3, 5 & 7 and the captions have also been rephrased by explaining what each subfigure represent. The coordinates of the stations shown beside their names in the title have also been removed.

Example language mistakes:

The language is readable, but needs additional proofreading. Only abstract and some sentences in introduction (the reorganizing of the structure will change many parts of the text, but please include also serious language editing of new version)

(Line) 23 “… equinoctial preference and without systematic latitudinal dependence.” - equinoctial preference, and there is no evident systematic latitudinal dependence (for example)

Response: This part has been corrected on lines 26-27

32 “…changes during the post-storms period can be observed and with possible effects of modulating forcing.” - changes during the post-storms period can be observed together with possible effects of modulating forcing…

Response: Correction has been made on lines 36-37.

38 “ The consequent changes during ionosphere’s disturbances are of importance to space physics research, orbit design of artificial satellites and in practical application…”  - The changes resulting from ionospheric disturbances are of importance in space physics research, orbit design and in practical application…”

Response: This part has been corrected on lines 41-42.

42 “are driven by different sources, which are broadly classified under those due.” – I’m not sure what you had in mind, but please change the part “under those”

Response: Correction has been done and now read thus; ‘Ionospheric F2-layer disturbances are driven by different sources, which are broadly classified into solar radiation, geomagnetic activity (S-disturbances) and those due to meteorological activities (Q-disturbances) originating from the atmosphere itself’ on lines 46-50

51 “which are normally” – which is usually

Response: Correction has been effected on line 59

57 “comprise three phases…” – comprise of three phases

Response: This has been corrected on line 65.

58 “During each phase of a geomagnetic storm different processes and interactions are at play depending on the prevalent geophysical and interplanetary conditions” - Different processes and interactions are at play, depending on the prevalent geophysical and interplanetary conditions during each phase of a geomagnetic storm.

Response: This part has been corrected on lines 66-67

64 “Hence it is rare for the ionosphere to experience large increase in ionization density during recovery phase relative to the initial and main phases most especially when the solar, interplanetary and geomagnetic conditions are quiet” – Hence it is rare for the ionosphere to experience a large increase in the ionization density during the recovery phase, related to the initial and main phases, and particularly when the solar, interplanetary and geomagnetic conditions are quiet. – anyway, consider less composed sentence to be more clear…

Response: This correction has been made lines 65-67.

67 “How this interaction takes place is still a subject of…” – The study of this interaction is still a subject of…

Response: This part has been corrected on line 78.

136 “conspicuous” – evident?

Response: Correction has been effected on line 160.

 And many other.  Language correction necessary in new version

Summarizing, I can advice major revision with second round of review, however the authors must change the structure and extend data sets and data analyses.

Response: More corrections have been done to improve the grammatical structure of the text.

Reviewer 2 Report

THE ARTICLE IS INTERESTING AND DEALS WITH A CURRENT AND SIGNIFICANT PROBLEM.
THE INTRODUCTION IS SUFFICIENT, THE REFERENCES ARE ABLE.
THE RESEARCH IS EXTENSIVE AND THE RESULTS ARE SPECIAL.
Discussions about the results are extensive and edifying.
I recommend that the article be published

Author Response

Response: The work and review of this reviewer on our manuscript is well appreciated.

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments on Remote Sensing-861798

The manuscript is unacceptable for publication due to the major flaws as follows:

1. There is no information about the edition of the IGRF model which the authors used in determining the geomagnetic latitude and geomagnetic coordinates referred in this study. The results of this study would be questionable if the IGRF model is irrelevant. The citation and a brief explanation for adopting a given version of IGRF model is required.

2. The authors claim that this work "focuses on the statistical analysis of ... "; however, I don't see any substantial statistics except simple arithmetic.

3. The manuscript is too lengthy stuffed with redundant materials, which obscures the main theme of this study and degrade the readability as a result. I suggest authors reorganize the main text, just present the decent contents, and clearly declare their findings and possible applications to the field.

Author Response

REVIEWER 3

The manuscript is unacceptable for publication due to the major flaws as follows:

1. There is no information about the edition of the IGRF model which the authors used in determining the geomagnetic latitude and geomagnetic coordinates referred in this study. The results of this study would be questionable if the IGRF model is irrelevant. The citation and a brief explanation for adopting a given version of IGRF model is required.

Response: We thank the reviewer for the comments raised in order to improve on the quality of this manuscript. A short note has been written on this first comment and inserted on lines 108-106 in the main text as shown below;

The geomagnetic equator is where the inclination of the geomagnetic field is zero in IGRF model. And the IGRF version used is 12th generation.

For reference; Thébault, et al. (2015). International Geomagnetic Reference Field: the 12th generation. Earth, Planets and Space, 67(1), 1-19. https://doi.org/10.1186/S40623-015-0228-9

The APEX geomagnetic coordinate is used in this study and is computed by tracing field line at the desired point up to the field line's apex, then the geomagnetic latitude is determined by the apex altitude (Richmond, 1995).

Richmond, A. D. (1995). Ionospheric Electrodynamics using Magnetic Apex Coordinates. Journal of Geomagnetism and Geoelectricity, 47(2), 191-212. https://doi.org/10.5636/JGG.47.191 

2. The authors claim that this work "focuses on the statistical analysis of ..."; however, I don't see any substantial statistics except simple arithmetic.

Response: Since substantial statistics was not employed in the study the topic has been rephrased thus; ‘Investigation of TEC enhancements over the Asian Sector observed from the Beidou geostationary (GEO) satellites during 2016-2018’

3. The manuscript is too lengthy stuffed with redundant materials, which obscures the main theme of this study and degrade the readability as a result. I suggest authors reorganize the main text, just present the decent contents, and clearly declare their findings and possible applications to the field.

Response: This point has also been considered in course of doing a major review on the manuscript which has afforded the presentation of the main findings of the study.

Reviewer 4 Report

My only quibble concerning the support of the conclusions by the data is that although the quiet-time TEC perturbations are attributed to lower-atmosphere forcing, there is no direct causal connection made between lower-atmospheric phenomena and the observed TEC perturbations.  Note that geomagnetic variations at low Kp level can produce surprisingly large variations in the ionosphere;  see "Geomagnetic control of equatorial plasma bubble activity modeled by the TIEGCM with Kp" by Brett Carter et al., GRL 2014.

The main English style complaint is the occasional use of contractions, e.g., didn't, can't, etc., which should be avoided in formal writing.

Author Response

REVIEWER 4 

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

My only quibble concerning the support of the conclusions by the data is that although the quiet-time TEC perturbations are attributed to lower-atmosphere forcing, there is no direct causal connection made between lower-atmospheric phenomena and the observed TEC perturbations.  Note that geomagnetic variations at low Kp level can produce surprisingly large variations in the ionosphere; see "Geomagnetic control of equatorial plasma bubble activity modeled by the TIEGCM with Kp" by Brett Carter et al., GRL 2014.

Response: We thank the reviewer for the above comment. It is an important point, which we also raised in the manuscript (on lines 336-337). We have now narrowed down the objectives of the study to reflect the main points in the ‘investigation of daytime positive ionospheric disturbances and the recurrence of TEC enhancements during the recovery phase of geomagnetic storms’. The role of lower atmospheric forcing is a matter of possibility and not confirmed from this study. Hence further study will be needed to make conclusion in this regard.

The main English style complaint is the occasional use of contractions, e.g., didn't, can't, etc., which should be avoided in formal writing.

Response: The English language tenses and style have been carefully edited.

Round 2

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments on Remote Sensing-861798 R1

The manuscript has improved some but it still has long way to go before it can be accepted for publication. There are too many flaws in this revision that reveal the authors' lax writing manner and insufficient knowledge in this subject. Below are just a few examples that give some typical arguments for the authors to consider revising their manuscript if possible.

Writing flaws

1. Misused abbreviations and acronyms: Avoid using abbreviations/acronyms in the title of a formal research paper. Abbreviations/acronyms in the abstract are not allowed either, unless it is critical for searching related references. In case abbreviations/acronyms in the abstract are needed, rules are the same as that applied to text. Check any writers' handbook before you start writing.
2. Nonstandard writing style of the figure caption: I suggest that authors refer to papers published in high-quality journals to find a good figure caption template if they don't have time to read a writers' handbook.
3. Confusing pagination: Some page numbers are missing or repeating.
4. Chaotic layout: See lines 116-121 for example.
5. Unprofessional term usages: For example, day-to-day variability shouldn't be replaced by day-day variability because it will mislead readers. "Asian-Australian" sector is not "Asian" sector.
6. Run-on sentences: Connecting too many ideas into a single sentence is not a good writing strategy. Even worse, those sentences either have poor grammar or erratic punctuation marks, making the manuscript difficult to read.
7. Unacceptable references for supporting essential research motivation: See lines 42-43 and the corresponding reference [3] which the publication year doesn't even know.

Technical flaws

The authors are incapable of presenting their research efficiently. Even with the help of figures, the conditions are not improved. I just give a typical problem as follows.

In Fig. 5, symbol N should denote "the total number of TEC enhancements for all seasons". However, the authors wrote "Here N signifies the occurrence number." in line 197. In fact, it should be "number of TEC enhancement days" rather than "number of TEC enhancements" because implications of these two statements are quite different in space sciences and astrophysics. Together with the run-on sentences in this section, I don't believe that common readers can understand an article like this. Fig. 5 is not the only problematic case in this manuscript, the other figures and their descriptions all have various difficulties. A scrutinized proofreading should be carried out after rewriting the manuscript.