Feature Comparison of Two Mesoscale Eddy Datasets Based on Satellite Altimeter Data

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Dear authors,

I am very satisfied with the content revised by the author. This has greatly improved the quality of the manuscript and also improved the reader’s readability. Although there is still not much scientific significance, it still has its value as a data comparison article. I now recommend this manuscript be published, congratulations.

Reviewer 2 Report

The manuscript is devoted to the comparison of two databases containing information on mesoscale vortices obtained from altimetric data. Perhaps such an article is of interest for specialists who choose which database they should use. Such research also has the right to exist, although it is more interesting to read articles about new vortex studies obtained by the authors.
Perhaps this is not an article for the journal Remote Sensing, but for more specialized journals whose articles deal with databases of oceanological research.
If the editors think the article can be published specifically in the journal remote sensing, then I support its publication. The authors have done a great job, made detailed descriptions of the differences of the databases in all parameters, the results are well presented.

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

Review Report on “Feature Comparison of Two Mesoscale Eddy Datasets Based on Satellite Altimeter Data” by zhiwei you et al.

In this manuscript, the author mainly used to compare two eddy databases. I can find that there are obvious differences between the two databases in these four sea areas, but unfortunately, I still don't know why there are such differences. What is amazing is that the author encourages readers to find out the problem by themselves. Unfortunately, the current manuscript is far from being published.

1. Line 72: Mesoscale Eddy Trajectory Atlas (META)
2. "Introduction" needs to be rewritten. I don't see any research motivation, purpose, necessity, and scientific issues that need to be discussed.
3. Section 2.1.1: “The data can be acquired at https://cds.climate.copernicus.eu.” This kind of introduction and citation is wrong, the author should give a clear database version and link. In addition, the data time is "1993 to the present", which is also incorrect. The author needs to confirm the time of the database used.
4. Line 132: eddy edge is not defined.
5. Section 2.2.2 “The data can be acquired at https://www.aviso.altimetry.fr/.” Same as above, please provide the correct link and database name.
6. Section 2.2.2, The two detection methods of META and GOMEAD were not invented by the author himself. These descriptions are only compiled by the author from the official manual. However, the author should write down the comparison and similarities and differences of these two databases, so that readers can easily and clearly know the difference between these two detection methods.
7. Lines 179-181: The sentence is very vague. In addition, if GOMEAD's eddy tracking method is consistent with META, there is no need to write additional section 2.3.2, it should be merged into section 2.3.
8. Line 192: Which database is EKE calculated from?
9. Line 194: Give the full name.
10. Table 2, I did not see "Lifespan" being defined in the second section. These data should give at least the standard deviation. Please confirm whether the value of Amplitude (cm) in the “Total” is entered incorrectly. These four values are the same as those in the CC area.
11. Lines 215-218 mentioned two statistical methods, but it seems that Table 2 and Figures 2 to 5 only use the Lagrangian method (Line 219). So, what about the result of the other method?
12. In Section 3.1, the author should discuss the situation where there are data inconsistencies in the two databases, for example, Amtitude is in the SF and SCS areas; Radius is in the CC area.
13. Line 256: Why?
14. Lines 265-266: Why?
15. Lines 317-318: Why?
16. Lines 327-329: Why?
17. Lines 337-338: Why?
18. Lines 354-355: Why? This is a big difference.
19. Lines 365-371: Why is there a significant difference in KE and SE.
20. Lines 378-379: What does the percentage mean?
21. Lines 385-386: Why caused this?
22. Lines 387-395: the reasons need to be given.
23. Section 3.5: The reason needs to be given, not after the statistical analysis is done.
24. Although the author gave calculation differences on different parameters in Section 4, these are not enough to explain the statistical analysis results on various sea areas in Section 3, because the statistical results show differences in some sea areas, not all sea areas. So in the third section, the author still needs to discuss the regional reasons.
25. Lines 582-584: Therefore, why do readers want to read this article? If there is no scientific explanation for a specific area in this manuscript, then other researchers can download the data for analysis by themselves.
26. Looking back at the abstract, it is obvious that the manuscript is not innovative enough, and scientifically demonstrative is even more inadequate. What is surprising is that readers may only know the statistical results, but still do not know the scientific difference.

Reviewer 2 Report

You et al: Feature Comparison of Two Mesoscale Eddy Datasets Based on Satellite Altimeter Data

This paper compares two Mesoscale Eddy Datasets which use different approaches to detect and determine the centre and sizes of the eddies. The study is presented in a clear way, and I have only minor comments to some small errors I have detected.

Abstract

A bit long and detailed. And I don’t like introducing abbreviations in the abstract (like META). META should at least also be introduced in the Introduction, see line 66.

1. Introduction

Line 42: ‘… have important roles..’

Line 66: I believe reference 2 (Chelton et al) is the main reference for the META dataset. I would suggest adding ‘(hereinafter referred to as the META dataset)

2. Data and methods

Line 163: I miss some information about which equation parameters a and b are used.

Line 194: Refer to Table 1 here. It is not referred to anywhere in the manuscript.

3. Results

Line 227: Opposite: To me it looks like AEs have larger radius that CEs.

Line253: Figure caption Figure 2: Explain also AE and CE.

Line 265: Refer to Figure 4.

Figure 4: remove symbols which are not part of the actual figure (house, close up look etc, top right of lower figure).

Line 275: Refer to Figure 5.

Figure 5: same comment as for Figure 4.

Figure 6: What is the time resolution in the these data? It is more often than once a year, but less often than Figure 7 showing seasonal variation.

Figure 6d: change MATE to META.

Line 311: Refer to Figure 8

Line 313-314: I believe it is opposite; maximum in summer and minimum in winter.

Line 325: why ‘generate or terminate’? Do you mean ‘generate and terminate’?

Line 365: ‘…was used to estimate…’

Line 402: ‘respectively was done.’

Line 431: Do you mean Figure 14, and not Figure 16?

4. Discussion

Line 471: Refer to Figure 20.

Reviewer 3 Report

This paper compared two mesoscale eddy datasets named COMEAD and META in four regions, i.e., Northwest Pacific subtropical front (SF), Kuroshio Extension (KE), South China Sea (SCS), and California Coastal Current (CC). Although the authors did not quantitatively judge which dataset is better, the information presented in this paper will give valuable information to readers of “remote sensing”.

【Comments】

1. The reviewer asks the authors to present the example, i.e., in which studies, which data (COMEAD or META) are more suitable for the analyses?

2. L. 103: The original data were interpolated to 0.15 * 0.15 degree. Was this procedure affect the results? If it did not affect, why is it?

3. For other comments, please refer to the attached pdf.

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf