Review of Influences on Chemical Distribution Patterns across the west Greenland Shelf: The Roles of Ocean Currents, Sea Ice Melt, and Freshwater Runoff

The paper investigates the key drivers of chemical distribution patterns on the West Greenland shelf during summer. The study focuses on how ocean currents, sea ice melt, and terrestrial freshwater runoff affect the distribution of macronutrients, carbonate system parameters, and dissolved trace elements based on a cruise with CTD casts, water sampling for nutrients and carbonate chemistry, and trace element analysis. The study area spans across several transects along the Greenland shelf.

While the research aims to provide valuable insights into this complex marine environment, the presentation of the study suffers from significant shortcomings in readability, structure, and data visualization. Sentences are often long, lacking a clear flow of ideas jumping between concepts without sufficient transition or explanation, especially in the result and discussion section.

Personally I feel the data is not presented effectively. While there are figures in the supplementary material, the main text lacks visuals to illustrate the actual data. Instead, it overuses tables, which don't show the data as clearly as figures would. Also a lot of new data and figures are presented in the discussion which makes readability harder.

Additionally, the referencing throughout the manuscript needs improvement. Several citations are inappropriate, not directly supporting the statements they accompany (See below as well). Key references relevant to the specific processes and region under study are also missing. For instance, the manuscript would benefit from including more recent and relevant work on the hydrography of the West Greenland shelf by Rysgaard et al. (2020)

Below some specific comments

L20: sea ice retreat creates nutrient gradients: in general you have to be aware that would you present is just a snapshot of july, so be careful to make statements like this. Yes, there is a gradient in July, but not necessarily for August, September,..

L 33: This is not supported by paper you cite here

L34-35: Look at newer circulation paper in West Greenland as well, eg Rysgaard et al. 2020

L47: suggest to look at more appropriate referencing for sea-ice conditions

L49: Do the studies provide evidence of this?

L55: in early-summer

L61: but also dilute due to FW introduction?

L 66: The cited studies do not provide any evidence of impact on shelf or slope nor does Hawkings et al. 2015 look at PP

L71-72: Two of the cited studies do not provide any data on  biological productivity

L 109: Were macronutrients filtered?

I am not an expert on trace metals but considering the low concentrations expected offshore, how trace-metal clean was the sampling gear?

AOU data is shown but no information is provided on the oxygen calibration?

Section 3.1. I would show more data in the manuscript instead of tables, potentially transects (not in case there are only 2 stations) or vertical profiles. Now the data is barely presented, or one has to go to supplementary all the time. This does not improve readability.

Generally in discussion, lots of new data and figures are introduced. This should be restructured in my view and moved to results sections. Fe PCA analysis in 4.1.2 and many more figures which follow

L419: July is mid-summer for the arctic

L560: Based on one point in outer part of Disko bay, it is a bit a stretch to make statements on nutrient cycling in Disko bay... In general for section 4.5, very little data is available close to the coast, based on literature it seems many processes are happening inside the fjords, so it seems authors should be very carefull to put those much weight on these few observations concerning the impact of FW runoff

Figures & Tables

Fig 1: Maybe good to integrate figure 1 and 5 in some way and show ice extent (fe with contours)  

Table 1: Silicate values (max) are very high, is that an outlier?

Fig 2: it would be good to include recent work in West Greenland eg Rysgaard et al 22020

Table S1, I assume that water depth are the sampling depths?

Fig 4: Instead of plotting vs lat/lon, plot against TS or other chemical values to assess drivers