Ventilation of the northern Baltic Sea

Neumann, Thomas; Siegel, Herbert; Moros, Matthias; Gerth, Monika; Kniebusch, Madline; Heydebreck, Daniel

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/os-16-767-2020

Articles | Volume 16, issue 4

https://doi.org/10.5194/os-16-767-2020

© Author(s) 2020. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/os-16-767-2020

© Author(s) 2020. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 16, issue 4

Research article

|

03 Jul 2020

Research article |

| 03 Jul 2020

Ventilation of the northern Baltic Sea

Thomas Neumann, Herbert Siegel, Matthias Moros, Monika Gerth, Madline Kniebusch, and Daniel Heydebreck

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Final revised paper (published on 03 Jul 2020)
Preprint (discussion started on 17 Jul 2019)

Interactive discussion

Status: closed

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

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RC1: 'Ventilation of the Northern Baltic Sea', Anonymous Referee #1, 23 Aug 2019
- AC1: 'Response to reviewer #1', Thomas Neumann, 26 Nov 2019
RC2: 'Ventilation of the Northern Baltic Sea” by Thomas Neumann et al.', Anonymous Referee #2, 24 Sep 2019
- AC2: 'Response to reviewer #2', Thomas Neumann, 26 Nov 2019
RC3: 'Interactive comment on «Ventilation of the Northern Baltic Sea” by Thomas Neumann et al.', Anonymous Referee #3, 30 Sep 2019
- AC3: 'Response to reviewer #3', Thomas Neumann, 26 Nov 2019

Peer-review completion

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

AR by Thomas Neumann on behalf of the Authors (22 Apr 2020) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Referee Nomination & Report Request started (27 Apr 2020) by John M. Huthnance

RR by Anonymous Referee #2 (08 May 2020)

RR by Anonymous Referee #3 (11 May 2020)

ED: Publish subject to minor revisions (review by editor) (12 May 2020) by John M. Huthnance

Dear Authors
Thank-you again for your much-revised manuscript addressing the reviewer comments. I now have reports from the two referees who were willing to see it again; their comments are below.

I had a reviewer-type question of my own: whether the distinct signal at station 9 (only) on March 12-13 is consistent with the progress of the modelled surface tracer. This is not very clear in figure 10 where stations 7, 9, and 10 all seem to be on the edge of the tracer signal. I also had detailed Editor comments which appear below.

Now I apologise in case I did not send my comments directly to you previously as intended; I cannot now find the “sent” e-mail.

In any case, everything for you to attend to is now below: I am terming it “minor modifications” meaning that I will take a last look but I do not intend to send it back to referees.

Yours sincerely
John Huthnance

Referee #2
“I find that the paper has been substantially improved, and that the model simulation made a nice addition to the observations.

I suggest your re-write the abstract, just to summarize it all in a better way. The name of the ship is not essential information and does not belong in the abstract, but the name of the model should be there. The abstract should describe your findings. Here it is really only the 3 last lines that describe the findings.”

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Referee #3
“Comments on «Ventilation of the Northern Baltic Sea” by Thomas Neumann et al.
This paper presents strong indications that oxygen rich bottom water found in one profile collected in the Bothnian Bay, may have been formed by inflowing water from the Bothnian Sea mixed with surface water in the Northern Quark, and not by salt release from sea ice. I reviewed the first version of the manuscript, and is quite happy with the present revision. A few comments follows:
Page 3
Line 10: CDT should be CTD
Page 4
Figure text to Figure 4: … a CTD cast ‘was’ performed (not ‘were’)
Page 6
Line 32: is ‘fraction’ a better word than ‘share’?
Page 14
Should paragraph lines 12-13 perhaps be before paragraph lines 9-11?”

My detailed Editor comments
Page 1
Abstract last sentence. Better “Brine barely contributes to dense bottom water.”
Line 20. (Raateoja, 2013) is not now very “recent”.
Line 25. “a remarkable” -> “a significant” or “much”

Page 2
Lines 3-4. “on the way of the dense water plume” -> “on its way by the dense water plume.” or “en route by the dense water plume.”
Lines 15-16. “re-suspension” (spelling)
Line 17. “dense” (spelling)
Line 26. “allow for a” -> “allows”
Line 32. “. . consist . .”

Page 5
Line 4 Maybe “. . brine draining from the ice accumulated in the hole . .” ?

Page 11
Line 17. Maybe “. . solid lines indicate mixing of water masses . .”
Line 22 and figure 8 caption. -0.78 or -0.79?
Line 22. “.. constraints . .” (spelling)
Lines 26-27. Please relate “oxygen saturated” to the rest of the sentence.

Page 12
Line 3. “drops down” -> “decreases”
Line 5. “ago” -> “before”
Line 6. “leaving the surface water” -> “from the surface”?
Line 11. “. . sea-ice-covered . .”

Page 13, figure 10 caption. “. . next-to-bottom . .”. This is not quite clear. Do you mean the bottom model layer or the next one up?

Page 14 line 13. “descent” -> “descend”

Page 16
Line 5. “. . initiates . .”
Line 6. “. . shelves . .”
Line 11. “ . . Northern . .” Delete “a”
Line 16. “assume” -> “find”?
Line 25. “establishes” -> “is established”

Page 17 Figure A1 caption. “extent” (spelling)

Page 19 lines 1 and 5. “reasonably” (spelling)

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AR by Thomas Neumann on behalf of the Authors (14 May 2020) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Publish subject to technical corrections (19 May 2020) by John M. Huthnance

AR by Thomas Neumann on behalf of the Authors (25 May 2020) Manuscript

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Short summary

The bottom water of the northern Baltic Sea usually is well oxygenated. We used a combined approach of numerical model simulations and in situ observations to investigate processes responsible for a regular ventilation of the Bothnian Bay. Surface water masses from the Bothnian Sea and the Bothnian Bay mix at the link between both regions. In winter, when water temperature is low, the resulting density is large enough that the water descends and replaces old bottom water.