Tropical Surface Temperature and Atmospheric Latent Heating: A Whole-Tropics Perspective Based on TRMM and ERA5 Datasets
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
General Comments:
By decomposing the interannual variability of both the tropical surface temperature (TST) and tropical latent heating (TLH) into equatorial symmetric and asymmetric components, the authors have revealed new features of inter-hemispheric connection in TST and TLH variability. These results are interesting and have important implications on the prediction of tropical climate variability. I recommend that the manuscript be accepted with some minor modifications.
Specific Comments:
Line 100: whole-Tropics should be “whole-tropics”, and I suggest the authors explicitly give the latitude range, i.e., whole tropics (30S-30N).
Figure 1 caption: The unit of TRMM-based tropical latent heating should be “W/m2”, not “Unit: mm d-1” in the caption. There is a redundant “,” in Line 206.
Line 169: “the ITCZ the equatorial Atlantic” should be “the ITCZ over the equatorial Atlantic”.
Line 173: “The second” should be “the second”.
Line 185: "ante-symmetric" should be "anti-symmetric". Also, I would suggest using either "anti-symmetric" or "antisymmetric" throughout the manuscript, rather than a mixture of the two.
Figure 4 caption: “(e)-（h）same as (a)-(d)，” should be “(e)-(h) same as (a)-(d),”.
Good quality.
Author Response
Dear Reviewer,
All of your detailed comments have been corrected accordingly in the revision, though they were not highlighted in the change-tracking version of the manuscript.
Specific Comments:
Line 100: whole-Tropics should be “whole-tropics”, and I suggest the authors explicitly give the latitude range, i.e., whole tropics (30S-30N).
Figure 1 caption: The unit of TRMM-based tropical latent heating should be “W/m2”, not “Unit: mm d-1” in the caption. There is a redundant “,” in Line 206.
Line 169: “the ITCZ the equatorial Atlantic” should be “the ITCZ over the equatorial Atlantic”.
Line 173: “The second” should be “the second”.
Line 185: "ante-symmetric" should be "anti-symmetric". Also, I would suggest using either "anti-symmetric" or "antisymmetric" throughout the manuscript, rather than a mixture of the two.
Figure 4 caption: “(e)-（h）same as (a)-(d)，” should be “(e)-(h) same as (a)-(d),”.
Reviewer 2 Report
Please see attached document
Comments for author File: 
Comments.pdf
Author Response
Dear Reviewer,
please see the attached file.
Thank you very much for your comments and suggestions.
Jianhua Lu
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Round 2
Reviewer 2 Report
The authors have considerably improved the document and have answered the questions raised in my previous review report. However, I would like to make several indications:
1) Review of the bibliography. In this journal the year is written in bold. Please revise.
2º) I still think that the inclusion of a figure in the methodology section would improve the understanding of the work carried out by the authors. These refer to the fact that this is very general and is explained correctly. I agree with the latter but I still suggest the inclusion of the figure since some readers are not specialists in the field.
Author Response
1) Review of the bibliography. In this journal the year is written in bold. Please revise.
Response: Done as suggested.
2º) I still think that the inclusion of a figure in the methodology section would improve the understanding of the work carried out by the authors. These refer to the fact that this is very general and is explained correctly. I agree with the latter but I still suggest the inclusion of the figure since some readers are not specialists in the field.
Response: Thanks for your suggestion. A flowchart for the methodology is added as Figure 1.
The numbers of other figures have been revised accordingly.
