Articles | Volume 17, issue 10
https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-17-5089-2025
© Author(s) 2025. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.Satellite-based regional Sea Surface Salinity maps for enhanced understanding of freshwater fluxes in the Southern Ocean
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- Final revised paper (published on 01 Oct 2025)
- Preprint (discussion started on 30 Apr 2025)
Interactive discussion
Status: closed
Comment types: AC – author | RC – referee | CC – community | EC – editor | CEC – chief editor
| : Report abuse
- RC1: 'Comment on essd-2025-212', Giuseppe M.R. Manzella, 08 May 2025
- RC2: 'Comment on essd-2025-212', Anonymous Referee #2, 04 Jun 2025
- AC1: 'Comment on essd-2025-212', Veronica Gonzalez Gambau, 19 Jul 2025
Peer review completion
AR: Author's response | RR: Referee report | ED: Editor decision | EF: Editorial file upload
AR by Veronica Gonzalez Gambau on behalf of the Authors (22 Jul 2025)
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ED: Publish as is (06 Aug 2025) by Alberto Ribotti

AR by Veronica Gonzalez Gambau on behalf of the Authors (11 Aug 2025)
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Comment on paper ESSD-2025-212
General comment
This is one of many papers that researchers clustered around BEC submit to journals and in particular to ESSD. This is a list (for sure not complete one)
It is normal that ‘general’ algorithms need to be adapted to the particular marine environments, but the dispersion of applications in different papers is not useful to the researchers interested in using SMOS products for several small seas and analyze the differences and possibly make further adjustments. The potential proliferation of articles for each single basin risks being of little use to research.
At the extreme north and south of the global ocean, important common problems are (1)Low sensitivity of brightness temperatures (TB) to salinity in cold waters, (2) Land–sea contamination (LSC) and ice–sea contamination (ISC), (3) Lack of sufficient in situ measurements. It would have been appropriate to discuss in a single publication the different peculiarities of the waters in these environments and what the appropriate solutions are. Same concept for the Baltic and Black Seas.
It is understood that in practice articles are written on the basis of collaborations that are built over time and therefore the practice of the authors is acceptable, but each article should highlight and point out the differences much more accurately. In particular, I would have expected a discussion after line 52 of the introduction on what has been done in the Arctic Sea and what needs to be done differently in the Southern Ocean.
In the remaining part of the article, the work for the geophysical corrections and for the analyses of the various SST products is appreciable. The validation and intercomparison are also very appreciable.
The paper itself is well written and practically complete and can be published after minimal corrections.
Specific comments
Introduction lines 14-15 - understanding of processes influenced by upper-ocean salinity, including ice formation – explain how it is possible to study the formation when SMOS resolution is large enough and the distance from the ice edge is more than 150 km, while within 150km there is high noise?
Figures 5, 7, 18 show very noisy areas near the continent. What does this mean for studies on the potential applications of the product: understanding of processes influenced by upper-ocean salinity, including ice formation and melt, the reduction of Antarctic sea ice extent, and the opening of offshore polynyas. It is not necessary to go into depth on the oceanographic issues, but to give a general indication of the limits of the product for the listed applications.