Summer Marine Heatwaves in the Kuroshio-Oyashio Extension Region

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Review report on “Summer Marine heatwaves in the Kuroshio-Oyashio Extension Region” by Yanzhen Du et al.

1. Line 86: “AVISO” -> “CMEMS”
2. Lines 336-337: “CMEMS” or “AVISO”, please add the doi and full name of dataset.
3. There are many abbreviations in the manuscript without full names, please check and correct it.
4. Line 123: the threshold should base on the period of 1982-2021, not only from 1982-2010, because the data used in this study (Table 1) is 1982-2021. Please reanalyze and redraw any results using MHW in this study.
5. Figure 2c: Why are there significant differences between 2012-2015 and 2018-2021.
6. Line 139: where is area A?
7. I stopped the review on line 158 because the author needs to re analyze the data (the fourth point I mentioned). The recalculation results may or may not change the years mentioned in the following chapter 3, but it is certain that the charts of the whole relevant calculation will be different, because after adding the data of 2011-2021 to the calculation, different results will be obtained.

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

This manuscript studies the KOE warming in recent decades, and analyze the causes for these warming events. Generally, although the manuscript does not provide the exceptionally novel results, the analysis and the conclusions are convincing, and should help to understand the thermal dynamical properties this area. So I suggest to accept this manuscript for publication. I also suggest the authors look into more ocean dynamical processes that can induce the AOE warming and cooling events such as Rossby waves and North Pacific Oscillations, etc. 

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

• Figure 3(a) is not distinct,
• There are a number of abbreviations in this paper, it is better to add a list of these abbreviations.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

1. Lines 103-106 and 381-383: This way of writing is incorrect, each database on the CMEMS website has a doi number, please give the correct database name.
2. Table 2: “CMEMS AVISO” is not the correct name of dataset, The author should not give any wrong information. The data of daily sea surface height (SSH) and geostrophic current (u, v) products on the CMEMS website are divided into two types, delay time (SEALEVEL_GLO_PHY_CLIMATE_L4_MY_008_057) and near-real time (SEALEVEL_GLO_PHY_CLIMATE_L4_MY_008_057). The author declares that the data used is from 1993 to 2021, so the author merged two sets of data? Because the data of delay time is only available from 1993 to 2020.
3. Line 187: The definition or calculation formula for cumulative intensity?
4. Lines 192-199 and Figure 3: What is the definition of the MHW that the authors select only 6 years as the "strongest"? For example, why was 2016 not selected as the "strongest"? Figure 3c shows that the mean intensity of 2016 is higher than that of 2018. Even 2010, 2011, 2013 are higher than the average of 2018? So why is 2018 chosen to discuss? The recent three years is not a valid reason.
5. Figure 3: what is Meanint and Cumint?
6. Lines 266-268, 321, and Figure 7: SSH anomaly may not always be a proxy for upper ocean heat content. Figure 7b shows temperature rather than heat content. Since the author has data for the entire water layer, it should be necessary to calculate the upper ocean heat content.
7. Lines 331-338 I am surprised that the authors discuss MHW in the KE area without mentioning the Kuroshio Extension Index (in [33]), which is a good opportunity to discuss in this subsection. KEI and MHW are obviously linked to each other.
8. Section 4.3: I suggest that this section be removed because the authors have no biologically relevant factors in the main findings and parameters, and such discussions are overestimated.
9. Conclusions: This section needs to be rewritten, and most of the content is repeated with the content of Abstract, and even provides less information than Abstract, which is very unreasonable. There should be a clear distinction between the two parts.