Variations of Planetary Wave Activity in the Lower Stratosphere in February as a Predictor of Ozone Depletion in the Arctic in March

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The paper analyses the variations of the planetary wave activity in the northern stratospheric polar vortex and consequences for temperature and ozone depletion. The paper is interesting and deserves publication if the comments below are considered. In particular, improvements must be done for some figures.

The figures of the supplementary material should be included in the main body of the article.

Lines 54 and 123: the acronym NCEP must be defined.

Line 57: I think these ozone destruction occurs almost each year.

Line 102: PSC can be formed with higher temperatures. Such low temperature are rarely reached in the arctic polar vortex.

Line 111: What the authors mean by “, which increase, e.g.,”

Lines 111-116: The sentence is too long and unclear.

Line 143; “2” must be in subscript after “CO”.

Line 148: The meaning of the PW zonal numbers 1 to 3 must be defined.

Figure 1a: I think that the mean values are in black and the Tmin values are in green. Such legend must be added.

Figure 2: The meaning of AMP (I think it is amplitude) and the unit (gpm) must be defined. Also, why some dates are in blue and others in red?

Lines 313-314; What the authors means by “but a neutral phase of the NAO”?

Line 342: I don’t understand how such underestimation was obtained. Is it from measurements or calculations?

Line 372: What the authors mean by “a reflection”?

The size of Figure 6f differs from those of figure 6a-e.

Line 402: “-6” must be in subscript after “10”.

Figures 6d-e and Figure 7 are not mentioned in the text.

Figure 9: Grey dots are difficult to read. Also, the legend of the colour outlines is missing.

Figure 10: The right limit of the figure is outside the page. Also, the legend of the colour outlines is missing.

The beginning of part 4 is more an extended abstract than a discussion. I can propose to start the conclusion at line 512 and to remove (or strongly simplify) the text before.

 

Author Response

Please see the attachment

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Review of “Variations of planetary wave activity in the lower stratosphere in February as predictor of ozone depletion in Arctic in March” by Vargin et al.

The purpose of this work is to study the relationship between the wave activity in February and temperature variations in the Arctic lower stratosphere in March. The content of the paper is quite interesting, and the authors generally coped with the task. However,  further explanations are needed to make it clearer.

 

My remarks and recommendations are the following:

 

-- The Introduction Section seems somewhat fragmented, with the main points not sufficiently highlighted. It is recommended to reorganize this section to ensure a more coherent flow and clearer emphasis on the key points.

-- Some of the sentences in the MS are rather long, which makes it somewhat difficult for readers to understand. It is recommended to make appropriate revisions to improve readability.

-- Page 3, Line 143: CO2 >> CO_{2}

-- Page 3, Line 144: W/m2 >> W/m_{2}

-- In the Formula (1), what does "Θ" stand for? I couldn't find its explanation. Is it the same with "θ"?

-- Page 5, Lines 215-221:  The Caption for Figure 1 is not comprehensive enough. For example, what do the green and black lines in Panel (a) represent? No description of Panel (c)? In Panels (b) and (c), the x-axis title should be "CC", and the value should be "-0.6 -0.4 -0.2 ..." instead of "-0,6 -0,4 -0,2 ..."

-- Page 9, Line 328: Has a significance test been performed for Figure 3?

-- Page 5, Line 362: Has a significance test been performed for Figure 5?

Comments on the Quality of English Language

Need to be improved

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The reviewer agrees with most of the authors' responses to the previous round of comments. However, upon a thorough review of the manuscript, the reviewer finds that in most of the presented figures, the X-axis and Y-axis labels are not scientifically standardized. In scientific plots, each figure's axes should include both the physical quantity (symbol) and its unit (symbol), rather than providing only one or neither. Please carefully review and correct all these figures accordingly. 

For example:

Figure 1a :ylabel: [K] >> Temperature [K]??

Figures 1c-d：xlabel: None >> CC, ylabel: [hPa] >> Geopotential height [hPa] ??

Figure 3a:  xlabel: Longitude >> Longitude [°], ylabel: [hPa] >> Geopotential height [hPa] ??

Figures 3b-c: lack longitude information

Figure 4:  xlabel: Latitude >> Latitude [°], ylabel: [hPa] >> Geopotential height [hPa] ??

Figure 5:  xlabel: Latitude >> Latitude [°], ylabel: [hPa] >> Geopotential height [hPa] ??

Similar issues are present in Figures 6 through 10, as well as in Supplementary Figures S1 and S2.

Author Response

We modify plots of our manuscript including supplement.