A Quick-Look Software for In Situ Magnetic Field Modeling from Onboard Unmanned Aircraft Vehicles (UAVs) Measurements

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

I have some concerns about the methodology of this study, and these can be summarized as follows:

-) In the manuscript, the authors emphasized that I quote, “Magnetometry onboard UAVs for crustal field investigations is yet challenging since the UAV moving platform is prone to magnetic field measurement errors”, “These errors arise from the electronics such as antenna, battery or communication systems, and from varying topographic or wind conditions that induce magnetic field time variations from the engine’s rotation.” and keeping continue to stress the drawbacks in the reliably estimation the magnetic field.

Despite the above drawbacks related to UAVs, the authors used simulated UAV data to model the magnetic field using the RHA basis functions. Why didn’t the authors use real UAV data? If there is a logical explanation for this, the authors should clearly explain it in the manuscript.

Moreover, all the results the authors obtained were biased because the drawbacks related to UAVs were not considered.

-) Some sentences are contracting to each other. For example, one sentence saying that.

“The main incentive of this work was to process and to stitch together UAV individual surveys obtained in-situ ….”   

The other is:

“In this paper, the RHA approach is applied on realistic data location but synthetic measurements ….”   

UAV data wasn’t obtained using in-situ data in the manuscript!

Author Response

Dear reviewer,

Thank you for your comments. We have attached a detailed response in the PDF form.

With best regards,

Erwan Thebault and Lydie Gailler

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

This work proposes a method of quick on-site evaluation of magnetic mapping quality and processing individual surveys obtained in-situ in order to verify their consistency for building magnetic map interpolated and leveled at a constant altitude. It is an important and vital task in field conditions.

I recommend to accept it for publication.

Just a few typos:

Page 4, Line 105. Should be Y after the second bracket

Page 4, Eq. 5. Should be V(x,y,z)

Page 5, Line 136. Index 1 is absent (dS1)

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

Thank you very much for your comments. The typos were corrected according to your recommendations.

With best regards,

Reviewer 3 Report

The authors are requested to revise the manuscript as suggested

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Dear reviewer,

Thank you very much for your constructive comments and suggestions. 

1) We have modified the list of keywords according to your suggestions.

2) We corrected the manuscript some typos, also in the equations.

3) We have now included a conclusive section that is indicated in bold font and that accounts also for the two other reviewers' comments.

4) Figures were modified with the units and the colorbars.

5) The code and the three synthetic datasets will be available for reproducibility.

With best regards,

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

I suggest that the revised paper is suitable for publiction.