Modeling Investigation of Thermal Circulations of a Large and Shallow Subtropical Lake

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

In this manuscript, authors examined the effects of the thermal circulation simulation of Taihu Lake. This topic is very important to deeply understand the influence of lake depth on lake breeze characteristics, although there are many uncertainties in the results. In fact, there are a number of papers on lake breeze circulation and lake themal circulation, the paper is not particularly novel. And, there are some problems in this paper: 

1. In the introduction section, it is recommended to put the description of Taihu Lake in the second section: Study Area and Observation Data.  In addition, some of the latest study results and progress on lake breeze circulation need to be added.

2. It is suggested to rename Section II as: Study Area and Observation Data, and the description of Taihu Lake environment and observation sites should be supplemented.

3. In Figure 2, it is necessary to clearly mark which image is image a, b c, d, e, f. Figure 2e, why is there a large deviation between the simulated data and the observed values?

4.The lake breeze model prediction only used the observation data in 2012, and carried out the lake surface environment simulation for only one year. It is suggested to use more years of observation data for model simulation and analysis, which may further improve the simulation accuracy of this model.

5.  I am concerned about the uncertainties associated with the modeling results. How much is the uncertainty for each calculation or model output? This issue was not well addressed at all and thus I am not quite convinced with the results. For revision, some discussions are needed if the quantification of uncertainty is not possible. 

Author Response

Thanks for the reviewer's comments, please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

The work is interesting, has a clear degree of originality, and is appropriate for publication in the journal after performing a major and very careful revision. Nevertheless, it needs some further improvements. In general, there are still some occasional grammar errors throughout the manuscript, especially the article "the," "a," and "an" are missing in many places; please make spellchecking in addition to these minor issues. The reviewer has listed some specific comments that might help the authors further enhance the manuscript's quality.

1. Specific Comments

·        Overall, the Abstract section is not giving any information about methodology, results, conclusion, and recommendations as it should be with clear. I suggest the authors to remove generic lines and present the strong statements and novelty of article. The abstract written by qualitative sentences. It is need to modify and rewrite based on the most important quantity results from this research. The abstract should be redesigned. You should avoid using acronyms in the abstract and insert the work's main conclusion.

·        You have used many abbreviations in the text. From this perspective, an Index of Notations and Abbreviations would be beneficial for a better understanding of the proposed work. Furthermore, please check carefully if all the abbreviations and notations considered in work are explained for the first time when they are used, even if these are considered trivial by the authors. The paper should be accessible to a wide audience. Furthermore, it will make sense to include also the notations in this index.

• The objectives should be more explicitly stated.
• The Introduction section must be written on more quality way. The research gap should be delivered on more clear way with directed necessity for the conducted research work.
• Please elaborate on the introduction. The following literature may be helpful in this regard: << Detection of Water Spread Area Changes in Eutrophic Lake Using Landsat Data>>, << Water spread mapping of multiple lakes using remote sensing and satellite data>>,  you may consider additional references as well.
• What is the novelty of this work?
• It is better to improve your contributions which are not so clear to show the advantage of

your work.

·        The novelty of this work must be clearly addressed and discussed in Introduction section.

• The methodology limitation should be mentioned.

Many equations are presented in the paper, and most look OK. However, please check carefully whether all equations are necessary and whether the quantities involved are properly explained. Also, some equations need references.

• Results
• This section is well written.

• Discussion

• Overall, the discussion part is weak. The Discussion should summarize the manuscript's main finding(s) in the context of the broader scientific literature and address any study limitations or results that conflict with other published work.

• Conclusion
• Some future works should be added to your conclusion.

Author Response

Thanks for the reviewer's comments, please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx