Numerical Modeling of the Impact of Sea Level Rise on Tidal Asymmetry in Hangzhou Bay

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The work deals with an interesting and timely topic in line with the targets of the journal. The manuscript presents very well the numerical analysis of the effect of the sea level rise on the tidal conditions around the East China Sea coast including the estuarine area. Only small changes are necessary in order to improve the manuscript as followings,

>The texts in Figures 6 and 7 are not clear and too small to read.

>The contour range of Figure 8 is not clear, especially in the outer estuarine area. (It may depend on the printing quality.)

>The final section may be not “Discussion” but “Conclusions” since the previous section includes the discussion.

Author Response

Dear reviewer:
Thank you for your letter dated September 27. We thank the reviewer for the time and effort that they have put into reviewing the previous version of the manuscript. your suggestions have enabled us to improve our work. we uploaded the file of the response to reviewer Comments. Please see the attachment.
We are sincerely grateful to the reviewers for this constructive comments.
We hope that the revised manuscript is accepted for publication in the Journal of Marine Science and Engineering.
Best regards
Sincerely,
Ying Li

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

The authors present the statistical analysis of numerical simulation data in order to investigate the tidal asymmetry characteristics under sea level rising in Hangzhou Bay. The topic matter appears very interesting and could be of interest to the Journal of Marine Science and Engineering. However, the paper is too hard to read at many places. The discussions are not in-depth. The results are unclearly presented. Judging from the above reasons, I recommend to reject the paper in its present form.

 1.     In the introduction part, the motivation and innovation of the present work should be enhanced.

2.     There are many typos in the paper which should be revised carefully. For example, Line 145, Line 161, etc.

3.     It is too hard to understand the Line 265-283. For example, what is the turning point? It is unclear whether you discuss skewness between Station like H1, H2 … or SLR.

4.     For Fig 6 and Fig 8, the large scale of the color contour makes it impossible to read the descriptions in the text. Moreover, the discussion about percentages is even more confusing.

5.     There is no explanation for Fig 7 and the font size in this figure is too small.

Author Response

Dear reviewer:
Thank you for your letter dated September 28. We thank the reviewer for the time and effort that they have put into reviewing the previous version of the manuscript. your suggestions have enabled us to improve our work. we uploaded the file of the response to reviewer Comments. Please see the attachment.
We are sincerely grateful to the reviewers for this constructive comments.
We hope that the revised manuscript is accepted for publication in the Journal of Marine Science and Engineering.
Best regards
Sincerely,
Ying Li

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

This work is within the scope of the journal JMSE; however, I have a major comment as follows:

That virtually no information about the turbulence closure scheme is a surprise. In a stratified estuary, the eddy coefficients are likely to vary (in space and time) over several orders of magnitude under the impact of shear and stratification. A brief description of the turbulence closure scheme should be provided, including the boundary conditions resorted to in the present study. Please refer to Chen and Liu, 2016. Modeling investigation of asymmetric tidal mixing and residual circulation in a partially stratified estuary. Environ Fluid Mech. (2016) 16:167-191. This paper might be an excellent example of the solution.

Author Response

Dear reviewer:
Thank you for your letter dated September 21. We thank the reviewer for the time and effort that they have put into reviewing the previous version of the manuscript. your suggestions have enabled us to improve our work. we uploaded the file of the response to reviewer Comments. Please see the attachment.
We are sincerely grateful to the reviewers for this constructive comments.
We hope that the revised manuscript is accepted for publication in the Journal of Marine Science and Engineering.
Best regards
Sincerely,
Ying Li

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

The manuscript has been appropriately revised to address the points raised.　The revised manuscript looks good. Based on the above, I recommend to accept the paper in its revised form.

Reviewer 3 Report

The authors have well addressed my comments, I suggest that this manuscript can be accepted for publication in the journal JMSE.