On the Quasi-Steady Vorticity Balance in the Mature Stage of Hurricane Irma (2017)

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

This Reviewer has attentively read the presented interesting research presenting both a novel approach and results in the current field of investigation (how vorticity budgets in tropical cyclones could be investigated to help explain how them evolve over time). My recommendation is minor revision, after addressing few minor remarks:

1. The clear disadvantage of this manuscript is the absence of scientific researches in the reference list that have been published in recent years (2024-2025). It looks like that research was written 1-2 years ago. Please, find recent researches in your field of investigation and describe them in Introduction accordingly (with appropriate citing in the list of refs.). This is mandatory;
2. When introducing the diabatic heating (in line 63), please explain designation of that term or pay attention of general readers of the journal to the explanation below Eqn. (2) (in line 79 or 83);
3. Please, refer to the source where continuity equation in a form (9) (line 162) was derived firstly (or derive it by yourself);
4. Since temperature is assumed to be varying up to sufficiently high values in cyclone, circa 355-365 K at maximum values in case of hurricane Irma  (heating of the mixed air flows including those with electrical charge within), please give a short remark in Conclusion that simple hydrodynamical model is a first approximation since modelling with help of MHD-approach should be applied, evidently.

Author Response

Dear reviewer,

We thank you for your thoughtful consideration and helpful comments. Below we list the improvements made to the manuscript.

Comment 1: The clear disadvantage of this manuscript is the absence of scientific researches in the reference list that have been published in recent years (2024-2025). It looks like that research was written 1-2 years ago. Please, find recent researches in your field of investigation and describe them in Introduction accordingly (with appropriate citing in the list of refs.). This is mandatory;
Response 1: We agree that an update of the references would benefit the manuscript. We added the Paul et al., (2025) and Kumar et al., (2025) references in L48.

Comment 2: When introducing the diabatic heating (in line 63), please explain designation of that term or pay attention of general readers of the journal to the explanation below Eqn. (2) (in line 79 or 83);
Response 2: This is a valid point. To clearly define the diabatic heating (without unnecessary formulas in the introduction), we added L82 and Eq. 4, removed the old definition in L84 and refer to the new definition in L62-65.

Comment 3: Please, refer to the source where continuity equation in a form (9) (line 162) was derived firstly (or derive it by yourself);
Response 3: Yes this is a good suggestion. We added the source [11] in L162.

Comment 4: Since temperature is assumed to be varying up to sufficiently high values in cyclone, circa 355-365 K at maximum values in case of hurricane Irma  (heating of the mixed air flows including those with electrical charge within), please give a short remark in Conclusion that simple hydrodynamical model is a first approximation since modelling with help of MHD-approach should be applied, evidently.
Response 4: Thank you for this interesting suggestion. We would like to respectfully clarify that the values shown (355–365 K) refer to potential temperature, rather than actual air temperature, which is typically much lower in the core of tropical cyclones. While magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) effects in tropical cyclones are an intriguing area, we found that there is currently limited research exploring their role, and they are not yet widely incorporated into standard modeling approaches. That said, the few studies we did encounter do suggest that MHD effects could be relevant, though the extent of their influence remains uncertain. We have therefore added a brief remark to acknowledge this uncertainty (L128–129). We opted to include it in the "Model and Simulation" section rather than in the Conclusion, as we believe the use of a non-MHD model does not substantially affect our main findings, especially given the considerable progress that has been achieved in cyclone research using purely hydrodynamic models. 

References

Kumar, S.; Verma, S.; Lodh, A. Unravelling the dynamical characteristics of tropical cyclones: Amphan and Nisarga using ERA5 reanalysis. Frontiers in Environmental Science 2025, 12. https://doi.org/10.3389/fenvs.2024.1475324. 

Paul, D.; Panda, J.; Bhasi, I.; Routray, A. A numerical modeling study on highly intensified tropical cyclones of North Indian Ocean using MPAS-A. Natural Hazards 2025, 121, 15413–15441. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11069-025-07392-z. 

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The manuscript is well-designed and well-written. it has scientific value.

I would suggest that the authors follow the figures. For example, the author mentioned 1b earlier than 1a, and some figures are not explained fully. for example, Figure 8 mentioned, Figure 8 has 4 separate figures, but the authors did not explain all the figures separately. 

It will be better if authors follow the figures and explain all figures clearly.

Author Response

Dear reviewer,

We thank you for your thoughtful consideration and helpful comments. Below we list the improvements made to the manuscript.

Comment 1: I would suggest that the authors follow the figures. For example, the author mentioned 1b earlier than 1a, and some figures are not explained fully. for example, Figure 8 mentioned, Figure 8 has 4 separate figures, but the authors did not explain all the figures separately. It will be better if authors follow the figures and explain all figures clearly.
Response 1: Figure 1a (L24) is already mentioned before figure 1b (L26), so this was not changed. The ordering of the other figures seems good, except for figure 7. Here we moved panel a to panel c, shifting b,c to a,b. We took care in updating references to the panels in the caption and main text on page 11 accordingly. The new order aligns better with the main text. Additionally, we changed "theta" into "θ" on the y-axis in figure 7 and added "which are" in L286 to indicate the control volumes are shown in a,b (not the integrated flux). Regarding the explanation of the figures, we chose to keep the main text concise and put relevant figure information in their captions. The figures are self-explanatory and we do not think there is a lack of explanation. In particular, the caption of figure 8 clearly explains what each panel of the figure shows. However, we do agree that a quick mention of the panels in the main text improves the flow of reading significantly here. Therefore, we added these in L304-307.