The paper presents details about SASSIE including instruments onboard the ship, the many uncrewed marine system assets, and the aircraft. General objectives of the study are discussed along with the sampling strategy employed for all assets deployed. Finally, the five major “plays” of the campaign are described where each one targeted a particular set of ocean conditions and regions. Data presented from each play indicate the vast amount of data that is available from SASSIE and how it will likely be used to understand links between salinity, near-surface stratification, upper ocean heat content, and sea ice freeze and melt. The paper presents a useful “catalog” of SASSIE data sets which will aid both the authors and future readers in using and interpreting the data. The few comments I have are listed below.

Figure 1: What does the color indicate (white vs. blue)?

Line 118: Delete second “within the ice”

Line 145: Just to clarify – the “previous ship and buoy computational fluid dynamics studies” refers to previous comparisons between ship and buoy measurements for a variety of ship-relative wind directions? A little more detail could be helpful here.

Lines 150 – 154: There is not much quantitative information here so the reader does not get a good sense of the accuracy of the blended temperature product. Could a time series comparison be provided so it is possible to see how the different instruments agreed or disagreed?

Figure 8: The uncertainties in b) and d) seem to be depicted by faint lines rather than dashes as indicated in the caption.

Figure 17: An indication in the text describing what the isotope data analysis shown in the figure reveals about the sources of freshwater during SASSIE would be helpful.

Review of “Salinity and Stratification at the Sea Ice Edge (SASSIE): An oceanographic field campaign in the Beaufort Sea” by K. Drushka et al submitted to Earth System Science Data

This manuscript presents a comprehensive overview of a field experiment (“SASSIE”) that was carried out with NASA funding in the Beaufort Sea during the transition period from open water to freeze-up in the Beaufort Sea in 2022. A general overview is given of what the experiment was supposed to achieve. Then details on the different types of measurements are given. Finally, a run-down of the so-called “Plays” is given which are separate parts of the cruise that had different sampling strategies for distinct goals.

There are a number of detailed aspects (see below) which I think the authors could improve, but overall the quality of presentation is good. However, there are two aspects about this manuscript which I find highly unusual. I explain them next, but leave it up to the editor to judge how this fits into the scope and policies of the journal Earth System Science Data. Pending that, I would recommend major revision.

1. I have seen many similar documents in my career before, but those were called “cruise reports”. Those were not peer-reviewed, but are still citable gray literature that can be identified through a persistent DOI. The major difference between what is submitted here and a traditional cruise report is that also the DOIs of the final processed data sets collected during the cruise are given. As such this manuscript gives a good overview of the SASSIE data set and how the different sampling schemes in time, space, and between instruments compare. However, the description is minimal regarding the processing steps employed to get from the raw data acquired at sea to the final processed data.

My understanding up to now had been that the goal of ESSD is to provide a very detailed description of these processing steps. So in that sense every individual data set provided with a DOI in this manuscript would be worthy of a separate ESSD paper. The submitted manuscript does not answer all (or even most) questions an end user of the processed data sets might have before they could use the processed data sets.

2. I copy the start of the author contribution statement here:

“KD and PG led the overall project. EW prepared the manuscript, figures, and code, with contributions from all co-authors. FMB and EW led the data publication.”

The author list reads “Kyla Drushka, Elizabeth Westbrook, Frederick M. Bingham, Peter Gaube et al” with Peter Gaube acting as corresponding author.

Traditionally, the person who writes most of the manuscript (i.e. Elizabeth Westbrook in this case) should be first author and not the person who led the project.

Furthermore, based on the information provided in the manuscript, it does not become clear why Peter Gaube is the corresponding author. This should maybe made clear to the reader.

General comments:

The nature of the cruise report also shines through in the fact that the various tables provided employ a multitude of different formats, particularly with respect to how latitude/longitude are written. Dates/times should also be in a consistent format and in the sciences are provided in UTC; they may in addition (but not solely) be provided in local time which might be easier to interpret with respect to solar irradiation.

It is also not clear how complete the meta data provision is as it is not mentioned in the manuscript whether raw data, serial number, calibration sheets, and the like are archived at the same DOIs. Might be good to mention this in the manuscript.

The font sizes on almost all figures are too small. They need to be easily legible when printed out in letter/A4 size. Print it out and try to read it yourself. Given that the figures are all made with the same script, this should be an easy fix.

Detailed comments:

L28 inducing -> introducing

L39 arctic -> Arctic

L57 It might be helpful for the reader if the authors also provided links to how the relevant satellite data can be accessed in this manuscript.

L70 Figure 1 caption: “Sea ice extent” is not defined sufficiently. Do you show the 10% contour line? Comment on the fact that the satellite product may also claim that there is 0% somewhere when the concentration in fact is low ~5%.

ETOPO2: In the Arctic Ocean, typically IBCAO is used rather than ETOPO2.

L75 “Woldstad” is italic in the caption of Figure 2, but not in Figure 1. Please be consistent throughout the manuscript.

L80 See comments on local time vs. UTC above. Please provide UTC throughout!

L103 Why were TSG data not logged at higher temporal resolution than once per minute?

Table 2 Sensor depth of Licor is missing unit.

Figure 7 is a weird projection in which it is very hard to make sense of the direction vectors. How about Mercator?

Figure 8b/c why is positive into and out of the ocean in the different subplots rather than being consistent?

Figure 8d Could also add a 24 hour moving window.

L185 Ho and Schanze (2020) is not in the reference list.

Figure 9a Add a line with the freezing temperature as calculated from the salinity.

L208 This section lacks detail in comparison to the other sections.

L210 “the ship’s” Please explain in more detail why it could not be removed correctly. What did you try? Give more details.

L212 Why do you not plot the vertical velocities as you plot any other data in this manuscript that ended up in the archived data collection?

Figure 12 Close-up photos of the instruments with a length scale indicated in the photos might be more effective in providing information to the reader about the collected data than the smiling people in the photos.

L229 “the average depth of the casts was 100m with some reaching 200m”.

L232 “quality controlled” There is no detail on what that entailed. Did you have salinity spiking issues? Did you correct them with a constant or varying drop speed? For the Teledyne Underway CTD, there are non-trivial processing steps as described at https://doi.org/10.1175/JTECH-D-13-00200.1 Was it necessary to consider these aspects?

L242 From the text it does not become clear whether the cCTD is a single use, expendable device or was used for multiple profiles.

L245 “roughly 0.1” That is a very rough estimate…

L246 “quality control assessment” And what did you conclude from this assessment?

Figures 13/14 Please use the same x- and y-limits and color scales in both figures to make it possible for the reader to compare the two.

Figure 16 does not make the task of extracting information about the ice floes from the screenshots look promising.

L282 “north is up” info is repeated just half a sentence later.

L288/289/573 Make sure that the “18” is in proper superscript. Currently it’s different in the two lines, but not correct in either.

L294 Should one not also have (accurate) salinity information to interpret the delta18O measurements? Please comment on how one will attain that.

L306 There is a Thomson and Girton (2017) paper and a Thomson et al (2018) paper in the references, but not a Thomson et al (2017) paper. It appears that you have not used a reference manager (not surprising given the varied list of authors who provided snippets of the manuscript), but then at least please carefully check your reference list against what is in the text.

L314 “within 10nm of the sea ice” How is that distance defined? 10% contour of satellite microwave product, which has low horizontal resolution and misses low ice concentration areas?

Table 3 Sometimes there is a space before the degree sign and sometimes there is not. “71.08 °N” and “71.12°N”. The format for latitude and longitude is also different than e.g. the caption of Figure 15, which is also different than the format in the title of Figure 15.

L319 KHz -> kHz

L322 Should the RMS be different or do you expect a true vertical difference (related to the mean salinity stratification) of that magnitude (0.1)? Why “(not shown)”?

Table 4 Aanderaa CT sensor was at 0.2m according to Table 4 and at 0.25m according to the caption of Figure 20!? Also the other depths (1m, 4m, 8m): Please provide them with the same number of significant digits, i.e. 1.0m, 4.0m, 8.0m or 1.00m, 4.00m, 8.00m depending on whether 0.2m or 0.25m is correct. Also compare L348.

Figure 20 title “Readings” Is that a technical term?

Figure 23 What depth are the plotted data from?

Figure 24 How are the x-tick labels “2022-09-20” and “2022-09-20” meaningful?

L359 Was it intended to be lost? Otherwise, it is a self-evident statement that it was the final one.

Table 5 third column features “N, 1”, “N ,1” and “N 1”. These are basic (of course they are tedious…) editing steps that should be done before the submission of a manuscript.

L367 “SWIFTs” Please provide the full name in addition to this abbreviation.

Figure 27a Please describe what the yellow thing is that is located in the left of the photo.

L383 “offset of almost 1” So have you removed that data from the final data set? Please clarify in the text.

Figure 28 would be more useful to the reader if you commented on the north-south extent in km of the line along which the deployments took place. Also you would need to specify of how many days of data (at least typically) the shown tracks are comprised.

L400 “during the SASSIE cruise” This snippet of text was clearly written by someone else, because elsewhere in the manuscript this is always written as “by the RV Woldstad”.

L408 “several equipped with a drogue” Table 7 hopefully indicates the presence/absence of a drogue and the depth of the drogue.

Table 7 Deployment time first two buoys: It is hard to believe that you deployed 2 buoys exactly at midnight UTC (00 seconds). Or is it correct that they had an initial horizontal separation in the water of 0m?

Table 7 What happened to the horizontal line on the bottom of the second column of the table on both pages?

Table 7 Have all of the buoys stopped recording data as of the time of the submission of the manuscript or are some still recording? Consider mentioning in the table.

L423 “86°N”

L438 What type of Seabird CTD was used?

L445 “frequent” How frequent?

L453 Did the float have a parking depth or did it continuously profile?

L469 “Note the different” I cannot read either one given the font size. Also, please keep them the same to give the reader a chance to compare the two.

L480 “drift laterally at depth of XXm”.

Table 8 Why do you only provide one decimal digit for some of the longitudes/latitudes? You should know the position better than to within 6nm!

L488 Please explain the ice avoidance algorithm in more detail to refer to where it is described in more detail.

Figure 39 An alternative way to display this would be a map of the trajectory and a depth vs. time contour plot of the temperature/salinity.

L549 “GHz,” -> “GHz”

L572 How heavy?

L574 “gradients of 2-3” -> “gradients of 2-3 / XXkm” or “differences of 2-3”

L578 “the presence” What % concentration does that refer to?

L594 “has been excluded” Why?

L613 “signals of interest” What were those?

L614 That sounds really interesting, however Figure 49 does not provide the reader with much they could interpret with respect to this point.

L629 “and vertical variability around 73.15°N” What do you mean by that?

Figure 51 Latitude is “N”, not “W” on the x-axis. It might be nice to have enough x-ticks such that also 73.3°N (the ice edge) is included and the reader does not have to visually interpolate along the x-ticks to find the impact of the sea ice edge in the temperature data.

L638 “All datasets are processed and calibrated.” I would have expected more detail on those steps in this manuscript.

Table 12 The descriptions of what “RBR” and “SBE” are inconsistent. WHOI: Institute -> Institution

L653 The other co-authors led the “collection and processing”, but JJS only led the “collection”?

L661 “extremely grateful”. Maybe “grateful” would suffice.

L708/711 The links are only partially underlined. Throughout the reference list decide to either have the links underlined or not. Currently some are and some other are not.