Lagrangian Observation of the Kuroshio Current by Surface Drifters in 2019
, Jianyu Hu 1,2,*, Hongyang Lin 1,2, Zhaozhang Chen 1, Jia Zhu 1, Longqi Yang 1, Zhiyuan Hu 1, Xirong Chen 1 and Xuewen Wu 1
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
Review report on “Lagrangian Observation of the Kuroshio Current by Surface Drifters in 2019” by Zhenyu Sun et al.
1. Introduction: The whole paragraph needs to be rewritten. It is obvious that the author hardly cites the latest paper results. Of course, some basic background knowledge is usually cited from papers published a long time ago, but some important research results about the "ocean drifter" mentioned in the title and in the Kuroshio region was recently published. For example, https://doi.org/10.1029/2021JC017373, https://doi.org/10.3390/rs14081816 , and https://doi.org/10.3390/rs14092154
2. The resolution of each image is very poor, please update all high-resolution images.
3. Please strongly consider moving Figure 1 to the Introduction or Data section.
4. Lines 130-132: Please rewrite this sentence.
5. Lines 193-195: Please explain this sentence in detail and use a drifter trajectory with such properties to illustrate.
6. Line 224: what is “Gray thin lines are for the others” mean?
7. Lines 239-253: There are many articles about Kuroshio larger meander, please cite the latest LM path related article and discuss it here.
8. The content of the Abstract and Summary is too close and repetitive, the summary can elaborate on the more detailed parts or compare with other years to show if there is anything special about 2019.
9. Please seek professional English editors to revise article writing.
Author Response
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
This paper contains new drifter data, which show new features of the Kuroshio variability, so it is worth publishing. The presentation however needs to be improved, both substantive and language comments are given below.
Substantive comments:
1) Maps are too blurred, need to increase the resolution.
2) Fig. 2: should you mention that seasonality only shows up in velocity but not the pattern? What is the maximum spring velocity in comparison?
3) About the Lagrangian diffusivity, the presentation needs to be more self-contained, perhaps by adding more physical discussion. It’s unclear for example why τ appears in some but not other equations. Can you provide a physical interpretation of the integral time and space scales?
4) Fig. 8 shows that R4 diffusivity has not yet plateaued, so why is it an overestimate? Provide a quantitative comparison with Zhurbas and Oh (2004)? Is this large diffusivity due solely to shear dispersion or could it be due to chaos associated with nonstationary Kuroshio (see Pierrehumbert 1991)?
Language comments:
5) Abstract: Avoid acronyms in abstract unless necessary. Drop “mainly” (not a proper word, “largely” or “fairly” is better); it is still “consistent” even if you have additional features. “occasion” is the wrong word, maybe “notable departure from the non-..”. Change “by … records” to “in … records”. Change “turning” to “turn”. Drop “sea area”. Drop “island”. Use “altimeter-derived dynamical topography”. Change “shelf” to “continental shelf”. These are just examples, based on which you should peruse every sentence in the paper to assure proper use of English.
6) Line 34: the sentence makes no sense. Could it be “lack of constraining continental shelf..”?
7) Line 158: change “discontinuously intensified” to “discrete maxima”?
8) Line 180: do you need to “define” (“designate” is a better word) these categories since you didn’t do for others? Maybe just characterizing them would be sufficient.
9) Line 231: you don’t know how “frequent”, so maybe better use “suggest … significant exchange ... ”
10) Line 331: change “accordance” to “accord” (when in doubt go to internet to check out sentence examples)
11) Line 333: “convergence means more than two things coming together”, what are the “diffusivity components”? Need to rewrite the sentence.
12) Line 353: change “left” to “western”. You can’t assess frequency, so change “frequent” to “significant”
Pierrehumbert, R. T., 1991: Large-scale horizontal mixing in planetary atmospheres. Phys. Fluids, A3(5), 1250-1260, doi.org/10.1063/1.858053
Author Response
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Round 2
Reviewer 1 Report
Dear authors,
The author has revised the manuscript according to my comments, and the quality of the manuscript has been significantly improved. I will now recommend this manuscript for acceptance for publication. This manuscript may help marine researchers understand the trajectory of the drifter in 2019.
