Sea level trends in Southeast Asian seas

Strassburg, M. W.; Hamlington, B. D.; Leben, R. R.; Manurung, P.; Lumban Gaol, J.; Nababan, B.; Vignudelli, S.; Kim, K.-Y.

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-11-743-2015

Articles | Volume 11, issue 5

https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-11-743-2015

© Author(s) 2015. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-11-743-2015

© Author(s) 2015. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.

Articles | Volume 11, issue 5

Research article

|

07 May 2015

Research article |

| 07 May 2015

Sea level trends in Southeast Asian seas

M. W. Strassburg, B. D. Hamlington, R. R. Leben, P. Manurung, J. Lumban Gaol, B. Nababan, S. Vignudelli, and K.-Y. Kim

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Final revised paper (published on 07 May 2015)
Preprint (discussion started on 17 Oct 2014)

Interactive discussion

Status: closed

AC: Author comment | RC: Referee comment | SC: Short comment | EC: Editor comment

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- Supplement

RC C1890: 'Reviewer Comment', Anonymous Referee #1, 11 Nov 2014
- AC C2086: 'Tide Gauge Comparison', Benjamin Hamlington, 12 Dec 2014
RC C1944: 'Review', Anonymous Referee #2, 18 Nov 2014
- AC C2089: 'Reconstruction Quality', Benjamin Hamlington, 12 Dec 2014

Peer-review completion

AR: Author's response | RR: Referee report | ED: Editor decision

AR by Benjamin Hamlington on behalf of the Authors (20 Jan 2015) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Referee Nomination & Report Request started (21 Jan 2015) by Eduardo Zorita

RR by Anonymous Referee #2 (09 Feb 2015)

Suggestions for revision or reasons for rejection

The responses to my concerns, as well as the other reviewer’s queries, have not been in general concisely addressed. The authors provide some generic responses but without answering to the specific questions. In consequence, my opinion remains unaltered and I still think that more effort should be done to improve the manuscript and make it publishable. And in particular the points below should be carefully addressed and responded.
- In my opinion more details should be given on the methodology. As expressed before in my first review, this paper should be self-consistent. I am nevertheless keen to accept the explanation of the ability of reconstructions to capture regional sea level variability, as this is also my feeling, and despite the authors do not provide any evidence.
- The new fig. 2 provides a quantitative estimate of the correlation for the different bodies of water between altimetry and reconstruction. It is remarkable that for 4 of them the correlation is very low, so the comment about the “excellent agreement” in the text is clearly an exaggeration. The first paragraph in section 3 should be re-written to describe appropriately the figure. Also, the authors should state the confidence level of the correlations. It looks like there is no statistically significant correlation in some areas. The authors must also discuss how this fact affects their conclusions. On the basis of what they discuss trends in these areas if they are not able to reproduce the observed variability for the present period?
- The new figure 3 only provides partial insight on the comparison between tide gauges and altimetry. My request was to mention (at least in the map) how many tide gauges were used in the reconstruction and this has not been answered. I think that the right way to address this issue is to plot the correlations (not only the time series, especially if the correlations are not quoted) in a map with all the tide gauges used. Some of them can be also plotted as time series. The current Fig. 3 is only qualitative. In Fig. 3 legends, axis and titles are not readable.
- Besides, it would be useful to include a comparison with tide gauges that were not included in the reconstruction. There are good quality tide gauges in the region that could not be used because of their limited time span but that could still be useful for the comparisons.

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RR by Anonymous Referee #1 (16 Feb 2015)

ED: Publish subject to minor revisions (review by Editor) (22 Feb 2015) by Eduardo Zorita

AR by Benjamin Hamlington on behalf of the Authors (04 Mar 2015) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Publish as is (18 Mar 2015) by Eduardo Zorita

AR by Benjamin Hamlington on behalf of the Authors (09 Apr 2015)

Short summary

The Southeast Asian sea regional sea level trends are some of the highest observed in the modern satellite altimeter record that now spans almost 2 decades. Here, we examine the 20-year trends in the region over the last 60 years using a sea level reconstruction, demonstrating that a significant portion of the trend variability in the region is related to natural climate variability, specifically to the Pacific Decadal Oscillation.