This manuscript presents a parameter sensitivity study of energy transfer between mesoscale eddies and wind-induced near-inertial currents using slab models. A large number of numerical experiments were conducted. The manuscript is well written. The results shown are generally interesting and consistent with expectations. The interpretation of these results requires some further elaboration and strengthening.  

1. The better performance of the modified slab model against observations. How robust is this result? The selection of the damping coefficient is kind of arbitrary. If a larger damping coefficient were used, the original slab model might perform better while the modified slab model could under-predict the magnitude of near-inertial currents.
2. The difference in NIC speed between the modified and original models is attributed to energy transfer between eddies and NICs. However, this difference could also result from the difference in the generation of wind-induced NICs in cyclonic eddies and anticyclonic eddies, rather than energy transfer between eddies and NICs.
3. The direction of energy transfer between eddies and NICs appears to depend on the wind rotation frequency. Please explain why, for some rotation frequencies, the energy transfer occurs from eddies to NICs, while for others, it shifts from NICs to eddies.
4. Can you explain why alpha has a maximum value at the eddy translational speed of 11 cm/s? What is special about this translational speed?
5. You talked quite a bit about the importance of strain and OW parameter, but your theoretical analysis seems to say that only the relative vorticity matters?
6. It feels that your theoretical analysis is not really on energy transfer between eddies and NICs, but on the impact of relative vorticity on the generation of NICs.

Some minor comments:

1. Any validation of ERA5 winds at mooring locations?
2. Line 166. Why is smoothing required?
3. Line 209-211. I don’t see two separate weak cyclonic eddies to the east and south in the SLA map.
4. Section 5.1. The eddy vertical structure is irrelevant here, since only the eddy surface geostrophic velocity is used in the numerical experiments.
5. Line 590. “Consider steady wind forcing...” There is still wind forcing with frequency omega on RHS of (27).

In this paper entitled «Parameter Sensitivity Study of Energy Transfer Between Mesoscale Eddies and Wind-Induced Near-Inertial Oscillations», Zhang et al. analyse data from mooring lines and a numerical slab model to characterize energy transfers between winds and the surface mixed layer around the inertial frequency. Serval Sensitivity cases are described in order to take into account different aspect impacting these transfers of energy (intensity and frequency of osciallating winds, intensity of ocean currents, …). Finally with an analytical approach the authors confirmed the relationships they found with the numerical simulations.

The topic of the paper is very relevant, as the interaction between winds and the surface currents at mesoscale is important for the ocean energy budget. In my opinion, the paper deserves publication in Ocean Science, but it first needs some revisions to clarify the results and the way they are presented.

See attachement for more details.