Factors Contributing to the Long-Term Sea Level Trends in the Iberian Peninsula and the Balearic and Canary Islands

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Please find my comments in the uploaded pdf

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

We thank very much this kind and constructive review. Maybe the main concern of the reviewer is the origin of data at Malaga before June 1992.

In the PSMSL there are data from a tide-gauge named as Malaga II, with ID number 1810. Certainly this data set starts in June 1992. But there is another tide-gauge named as Malaga in the PSMSL with ID 496. This data set extends from 1944 to 2013. This tide-gauge is operated (or was operated) by our own institution, therefore we were aware of it. However you can find it in the PSMSL.

The reviewer also expresses some concerns related to the quality of the reconstructions. We admit that this is a very important question. Let's consider the case of Malaga sea level. Malaga and Malaga II have a common period which is from June 1992 to 2013. If we have carry out a linear regression of Malaga sea level on Malaga II, we obtain a correlation coeficient of 0.91 (see supplementary material). We have Malaga II data from 2013 to 2019, but no Malaga data. If we use the coefficients of the linear regression, we can reconstruct Malaga sea level for this period of missing data. Notice that we do not merge both time series, but use the regression. The quality of this reconstruction is based on the high correlation coefficient. We have emphasize this in the supplementary material where this methodology is explianed.

Another point is the use of a linear trend. The reviewer is absolutely right. In the main text we explain that this is representative of an average rate of change, but obviously dufferent periods of time can show very different rates of change. Anyway this is a common way of expressing these "average" changes in the lenguage of IPCC.

Finally, the reviewer is also right concerning the GIA. This is probably something more complex that simply using the corrections available in the PSMSL. However these effects seem to be small, especially in the Mediterranean Sea.

We have found very intersting some of the references recommended by the reviewer. We will consiedr them in the future and maybe, we'll make some comments and questions to the reviewer (as he intends to sign the review).

Thanks again.

Reviewer 2 Report

The  paper “Factors contributing to the long-term sea level trends in the Iberian Peninsula and the Balearic and Canary Islands”represents an importante effort to built analyses associated with local and regional sea level variations. Supported by strong methological approaches, the paper is  consistent and realiable, though the serie of incertainities related to the absence of data or to some difficulty in associating all the variables, Nevertheless, the authors presented good arguments and criteria do overpass the incertainities, and the results are very interesting, and in agreeing with previous data about the subject. Only some situations should be clarified in the incertainity: talking about tide gauge (line 296), the authors classified a data as “suspicious”, but do not clarify of explain what is suspicous, in such a way the the behaviour is suspicious. Besides this aspect, everything else is good enough, and the data analysed in the paper should be known by speciliazed scientific comunity.

Author Response

Thanks very much for your constructive and positive review.

You are right. Maybe the term "suspicious" is not appropriate. We have changed the redaction of this paragraph, simply explaining the problem observed in Vigo sea level: There is a decreasing trend since 1998, whereas in the nearby tide-gauges, and in another tide-gauge also operating at Vigo (Vigo II) the trend for the period 1998-2019 is positive. Therefore, we reconstruct our time series from 1998 to 2019 using the redundant time series at Vigo II. We have explained this better in the new version and supressed the term "suspicuous".

Thanks very much.