Summertime episodic chlorophyll <i>a</i> blooms near the east coast of the Korean Peninsula

Son, Young-Tae; Park, Jae-Hyoung; Nam, SungHyun

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/bg-15-5237-2018

Articles | Volume 15, issue 16

https://doi.org/10.5194/bg-15-5237-2018

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

https://doi.org/10.5194/bg-15-5237-2018

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

Articles | Volume 15, issue 16

Research article

|

30 Aug 2018

Research article |

| 30 Aug 2018

Summertime episodic chlorophyll a blooms near the east coast of the Korean Peninsula

Young-Tae Son, Jae-Hyoung Park, and SungHyun Nam

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Final revised paper (published on 30 Aug 2018)
Preprint (discussion started on 23 Apr 2018)

Interactive discussion

Status: closed

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

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- Supplement

RC1: 'Summer-time episodic chlorophyll-a blooms near east coast of Korea', Anonymous Referee #1, 04 Jun 2018
- AC1: 'Response to Reviewer #1 on “Summertime episodic chlorophyll-a blooms near the east coast of Korea” by Y. -T. Son, J. -H. Park, and S.H. Nam', SungHyun Nam, 05 Jul 2018
RC2: 'Review of 'Summer-time episodic chlorophyll-a blooms near east coast of Korea'', Anonymous Referee #2, 12 Jun 2018
- AC2: 'Response to Reviewer #2 comments on “Summertime episodic chlorophyll-a blooms near the east coast of Korea” by Y. -T. Son, J. -H. Park, and S.H. Nam', SungHyun Nam, 05 Jul 2018

Peer-review completion

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

ED: Reconsider after major revisions (05 Jul 2018) by Emilio Marañón

AR by SungHyun Nam on behalf of the Authors (06 Jul 2018) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Referee Nomination & Report Request started (06 Jul 2018) by Emilio Marañón

RR by Anonymous Referee #1 (26 Jul 2018)

Suggestions for revision or reasons for rejection

Review of:

Summer-time episodic chlorophyll-a blooms near east coast of Korea

by Young-Tae Son, Jae-Hyoung Park, and SungHyun Nam

Manuscript ID: BG 2018 183 (2nd submission)

General comments

This paper has greatly improved and I thank the Authors for the effort.
I suggest some minor revisions below, after which I deem the paper to be ready for publication. Details can be found below, and the Authors can contact me via the Editor, anytime for any questions.
I do have a scientific question for the Authors, NOT part of the review, but maybe for future work, if they want. If you compare salinity in Fig. 6 with the rest, you find out that the summer 2012 at ESROB is way more saltier. Are the authors planning to find out why? Also, in general, the salinity drops in summer but not always in the same way. E.g. mid-June to mid-August in 2011 (Fig. 5), then there is NO DROP in 2012 (Fig. 6) and from mid-July to end of record beyond September in 2013 (Fig. 7). Why this variability in salinity drop period? And also why this salinity drop at all? From the figures it doesn't look as if it's due to rainfall. Anyway this is just a curiosity.

Form

The English of the manuscript is now correct, with a few little additional corrections (see below).

Particular comments and suggested text corrections

Title, Abstract and 1. Introduction

OK.

2 Data and Methods

Line 62. "upper-most" -> "uppermost"

Line 86. "at a position 50 times higher than previous polar orbiting ocean color satellites" -> "and its altitude is 50 times higher (35,786 km) than that of polar orbiting ocean color satellites". GOCI is not polar orbiting because it's goo-stationary, so non need for "previous", I guess.

Line 90. "applying" -> "by applying"

Line 95. "variation for spatial Chl a distribution" -> "variation in Chl a spatial distribution"

Line 98. "by Korea" -> "by the Korea"

3. Results

3.1. Climatological CF variations

Lines 21-22 and Fig. 3. "Weak poleward... prevailed". From Fig. 3, how do you explain that, in Jan-May and Oct-Dec, alongshore currents are poleward (weakly positive) when alongshore wind stress is equatorward (negative)? Is the current not wind-driven in these months? (This is not mandatory, but interesting to have a comment).

3.2. CF events observed in summers of 2011, 2012, and 2013

Line 125-6. "where the surface CF was significantly" -> "by the surface CF being significantly".

Line 126-7. "were defined as a period of" -> "were defined as the period during which"

Line 146. "(showing downwelling induced by equatorward wind stress)" -> "(a consequence of downwelling induced by the equatorward wind stress, as also testified by the rise in temperature at all levels before e04, in Fig. 6 d)". I wrote "the rise in T", but if you have a better idea for proof, please write it in its place. That is, I think you should (easily) prove with your data that you have downwelling, because the equatorward the current is not a definite proof, though it goes in the good direction.

3.3. Surface CF distributions

Line 175. "reached to JJ" -> "reached JJ"

Line 175. "farther south near the coast by July 27" -> "most probably hit ESROB by July 27 (Fig. 8d is cloudy, but salinity drops in Fig. 7)"

Line 179. "Interestingly" -> "Coherently with this picture,"

Line 183. "main axis" -> "its main axis"

Line 189. "The offshore advection of coastal plume water of northern origin..." For the E10 event, Fig. 7 shows near-zero currents at ESROB. Also, salinity doesn't show a wedge drop. Also, Fig. 9c shows a cyclonic eddy offshore of SO-BGN-DH. So how can one be sure that E10 is not due to recirculation of southern CF-rich water? I think it could be either or both northern OR southern CF-rich water. Chl imagery would solve the problem, but is not available, buit the lack of a wedge drop in SSS is maybe a telltale that it is an E07-like event (even though summer salinity is in general much lower than that at E07).

Discussion

4.1. Horizontal advection

Line 197. "8 of 10" -> "8 out of 10"

Line 215. "transportation" -> "transport"

Line 224. "half the" -> "half of the"

Lne 226 -> "northern origin" -> "northern origin, similarly to E09 and other northern water advection events," (just to give a little more coherence among the "classes" of events you talk about, i.e. northern vs. southern water advection events).

4.2. Other mechanisms

Line 244. "nutrient supplied" -> "nutrients supplied"

Line 245. "by surface" -> "by the surface"

Line 251. "averaged" -> "average"

4.3. Inter-annual variations

Line 267. "in and around" -> "to and around"

Line 268. "year-to-year" -> "from year to year" (maybe better)

Line 273. "half the" -> "half of the"

Line 277. "coastal trapped" -> "coastally trapped"

Line 285. "impact of EKWC" -> "role of the EKWC"

Line 286. "yields less" -> "reveals a reduced"

Line 286. "in 2011" -> "during the 2011"

Line 287. "than 2012" -> "than in the 2012"

5. Concluding remarks

Line 293. "northern coast" -> "northern Korean coast"

Line 301. "play" -> "plays"

Tables, Figures and captions

Line 404. Figure 1 caption. "rainfall station" -> "rainfall stations"

Line 413. Figure 2 caption. "(dash lines)" -> "(dashed lines)"

Figure 3. The labels in the rectangles of each panel (E.g. WSa, WSc in the top plot) are virtually unreadable, especially subscripts, also at a 120% zoom, please enlarge characters. Lines are OK.

Line 423. Figure 4 caption. "percentage saturation" -> "percent saturation"

Line 479. Figure 10 caption. "colorbar in the right" -> "colorbar on the right".

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ED: Publish subject to technical corrections (09 Aug 2018) by Emilio Marañón

AR by SungHyun Nam on behalf of the Authors (16 Aug 2018) Author's response Manuscript

Short summary

This study reveals episodic blooms often accompanying abrupt changes in sea surface salinity and wind forcing off the east coast are triggered by the equatorward and cross-shore advection of chlorophyll-rich plume water of northern origin. Since previous studies have not focused on the episodic blooms near the coast over the course of days to weeks during the summer, we tried to address the roles of the physical advection process in the marine ecosystem based on observations of three summers.