Transport variability of the Brazil Current from observations  and a data assimilation model

Schmid, Claudia; Majumder, Sudip

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/os-14-417-2018

Articles | Volume 14, issue 3

https://doi.org/10.5194/os-14-417-2018

© Author(s) 2018. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/os-14-417-2018

© Author(s) 2018. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 14, issue 3

Research article

|

07 Jun 2018

Research article |

| 07 Jun 2018

Transport variability of the Brazil Current from observations and a data assimilation model

Claudia Schmid and Sudip Majumder

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Final revised paper (published on 07 Jun 2018)
Supplement to the final revised paper
Preprint (discussion started on 04 Aug 2017)

Interactive discussion

Status: closed

AC: Author comment | RC: Referee comment | SC: Short comment | EC: Editor comment

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- Supplement

RC1: 'Review of ms os-2017-59', Anonymous Referee #1, 19 Sep 2017
- AC1: 'response to reviewer 1', Claudia Schmid, 01 Mar 2018
RC2: 'Moderate to Major Revision', Anonymous Referee #2, 20 Dec 2017
- AC2: 'response to reviewer 2', Claudia Schmid, 01 Mar 2018

Peer-review completion

AR: Author's response | RR: Referee report | ED: Editor decision

AR by Claudia Schmid on behalf of the Authors (01 Mar 2018) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Referee Nomination & Report Request started (18 Mar 2018) by David Stevens

RR by Anonymous Referee #1 (22 Mar 2018)

RR by Anonymous Referee #2 (31 Mar 2018)

ED: Publish subject to technical corrections (14 May 2018) by David Stevens

The authors have done a good job of addressing the concerns of reviewers. Thus I am happy to recommend publication of the manuscript. I have some minor technical corrections which will hopefully aid clarity.

Abstract

Line 11: remove “the” leaving “… with increasing latitude (both in Argo & SSH and HYCOM), mainly due to mesoscale and interannual variability.…”

Line 12: insert commas “…Argo & SSH, as well as HYCOM, reveal interannual variability…”

Lines 13/4: remove the sentence “It mostly does not quite reach the level of significance because the duration of the multi-year phases with high (low) transports varies quite a bit.” as it is not particularly clear and does not enhance the abstract.

Line 17: remove “(EOF)” as the acronym is not used in the abstract and it is defined when first used in the main text.

Page 5, lines 6/7: replace last sentence with “Most of the estimates from earlier studies are based on quasi-synoptic sections, while some are based on time series from moorings with current meters or Inverted Echo Sounders (IES).”

Page 5, line 18. capital N for “North Atlantic”

Page 6, line 4: replace “dynamic” with “dynamics” and “is” by “are”

Page 12, line 14: insert the word “magnitude” between “with” and “20”

Page 16, line 15: replace “in in” with “in”

Page 20, line 8: SAM isn’t an ocean index. The Marshall time series that is used in the manuscript is based on land station observations of atmosphere pressure.

Page 20, line 10: replace “indexes” with “indices”

Page 20, line 21: replace “maximum” with “maxima”

Page 21, line 3: replace “indexes” with “indices”

Page 26, line 21: replace “In consistency” with “Consistent”

Page 33: There is a comma missing after the Evans and Signorini (1985) reference.

Page 34: change end of b) to “… collected between January 9, 1992 and May 2, 2016. Though why so precise here when a) just states the years.

Page 36, caption: Either use grey or gray consistently, better grey. The same holds throughout the manuscript.

Page 39, caption: There is a stray 2 in the word “transport”

Page 49, line 3: remove “less than”

Page 49, line 10: extraneous open bracket before the references

Page 49, line 16: replace “Because” with “As”

Page 49, line 16: replace “Because of” with “Due to”

Page 50, in a few locations. Should you use the phrase “identical transports” presumably the numerical values arising fem the XBT transacts or model are not precisely identical, but simply very close.

A general point on the shaded colour figures. Could you avoid using the old default Matlab (I’m assuming) jet/rainbow colour map. This has a number of issues associated with inaccessibility and perception skewing. Even Matlab have acknowledged this now by making parula the default colourmap. See
https://blogs.mathworks.com/steve/2014/10/20/a-new-colormap-for-matlab-part-2-troubles-with-rainbows/
https://blogs.egu.eu/divisions/gd/2017/08/23/the-rainbow-colour-map/
https://www.climate-lab-book.ac.uk/2014/end-of-the-rainbow/

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AR by Claudia Schmid on behalf of the Authors (15 May 2018) Author's response Manuscript

Short summary

An analysis of observed transports in the Brazil Current shows a factor 9 increase between its origin and terminus. The 23-year time series reveals an annual cycle with a maximum in austral summer whose significance decreases on the way south and varies interannually. In addition, 2–4-year long phases with relatively high/low values are observed. A correlation of the transport with the Southern Annular Mode (Niño 3.4 index), with a lag of 6 (8) months, is present at 24° S.