In the revised version of the paper entitled "Network-based study of Lagrangian transport and mixing" by Kathrin Padberg-Gehle and Chrisiane Schneide, and in their response to the referee comments, the authors have addressed all criticisms and suggestions. The new, very interesting results, the additional, careful discussion of certain points, and the amendments in the formulation make the paper acceptable for final publication.
Nevertheless, I list a few observations regarding the novelties in the revised version that should be addressed.
- The authors state in their response to Referee #1, in point 5, that they will provide more details about the spectral analysis in section 2. However, I did not find this part in the paper, neither in section 2, nor in section 3.3 (where it would fit better). (This discussion is, however, already part of the response, so it just needs to be adapted to the text of the paper, and included at an appropriate position.)
- Page 7, lines 25-26: From this discussion, a conclusion should be explicitly drawn about the reasonable choice for the investigated range of epsilon.
- Page 8, lines 9-16: It should be mentioned that the jet core is not resolved by any of the local network measures in the considered (sparse) setting.
- In the same paragraph: It should be explained why "blurring the local information" (with increasing epsilon) results in increased average node degree <d>_nn in the regular regions compared to the mixing regions.
- Page 12, lines 10-11: It would be beneficial to extend the sentence "The local clustering coefficient is large in particular in the core of the vortex" by adding: ", where the node degree and the average node degree take on smaller values", or something similar.
- Page 12, lines 15-16: The phrasing "with isolated yellow regions in the background flow" might need to be clarified, e.g. like "with small, isolated yellow regions dispersed in the background flow".
Finally, responding to point 2 of the authors' response to my earlier comment, I agree that more numerical results should not be displayed for the Bickley jet. At the same time, I emphasize again that the dependence on the time interval carries useful information about the inherent properties of the system's dynamics (as illustrated by the case of the stratospheric polar vortex), and should not be "fixed by the user or by the available data". (If only restricted data is available, subintervals can be considered.)
Apart from the above points, I find the paper to be really well-composed, and I recommend acceptance.
Gabor Drotos |