Marine Meteorological forecasts for Coastal Ocean Users &ndash;
Perceptions, Usability and Uptake

Rautenbach, Christo; Blair, Berill

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/gc-2020-50

Preprints

https://doi.org/10.5194/gc-2020-50

Preprints

26 Jan 2021

Review status: a revised version of this preprint was accepted for the journal GC and is expected to appear here in due course.

Marine Meteorological forecasts for Coastal Ocean Users – Perceptions, Usability and Uptake

Christo Rautenbach^1,2,3 and Berill Blair⁴ Christo Rautenbach and Berill Blair

Show author details

¹Coastal and Estuarine Processes, National Institute for Water and Atmospheric Research (NIWA), Hamilton, New Zealand
²Institute for Coastal and Marine Research, Nelson Mandela University, South Africa
³Department of Oceanography and Marine Research Institute, University of Cape Town, South Africa
⁴Environmental Policy Group, Wageningen University and Research, Wageningen, The Netherlands

Received: 23 Dec 2020 – Accepted for review: 25 Jan 2021 – Discussion started: 26 Jan 2021

Abstract. The present study aims to address a proposed disconnect between science and the public. In this case, marine meteorological (metocean) information and the users of these data. Here, the focus is not only on the perceptions, usability and uptake of extreme event forecasts but rather focused on general, everyday situations. The research was conducted by means of a survey, designed around four research questions. Each question was then populated with propositions that were the guideline for the questionnaire. The research questions covered topics ranging from forecasting tool ergonomics, accuracy and consistency, usability, institutional reputation and uncertainties related to Climate Change (to name but a few). The survey was conducted in two southern hemisphere countries, South Africa and New Zealand. The online questionnaire was widely distributed to include both recreational and commercial users. Cultural Consensus Analysis (CCA) was used to investigate knowledge-based agreements within the total group of respondents as well as sectoral and community subgroups. The existence of subgroups within the communities (e.g. recreational and commercial) was also established. The general shared knowledge results are discussed together with user group demographic statistics. A comprehensive summery of all four research questions, with all the resulting propositions are also provide. The percentage of each subgroup’s agreement with the knowledge-based score (CCA model derived) is also provided with the beforementioned. Finally, a conceptual diagram is proposed to highlight the important interplay between forecast product co-development and scientific accuracy/consistency.

Christo Rautenbach and Berill Blair

Status: closed

RC1:
'Comment on gc-2020-50', Anders Doksæter Sivle, 04 Mar 2021
Overall, I like the manuscript. For example, I think it is a good idea to use an earlier study as a starting point, and compare with those results, as well as a comparison between two different countries on two different continents. I also like connections drawn between the perceptions and cultural similarities/differences, and I think some of the discussions related to these issues are new and interesting. Further, I like the idea of having a workshop with metservices to discuss topics and questions when preparing the study/survey. I do think that such a paper fits within the scope of the journal and will be interesting to readers of Geoscience communication as well as to the wider meteorological society. However, I also have some issues that I think the authors need to sort out before the manuscript is ready for publication (major revision required). Below you will find my comments. They are numerous, but you should not be scared; I’m not negative to the manuscript, I’m just engaged in the topic and want to contribute such that it can make a higher impact.

General comments

To me, and others unfamiliar with the methodology used in the study (I assume many from the meteorological services are), it would be good to get a better idea of the concept/method earlier in the manuscript. There are many paragraphs and sections mentioning “CCA” and “(shared) knowledge”, but I don’t really understand what it is before late in the results section when more concrete examples are given. Perhaps the authors could consider including an example of the result and which knowledge they are talking about already in the abstract. Now the abstract is describing the methodology, but little is said about the results or impact of the study, so including an example of a result could strengthen the abstract anyway, I think. The same can be said about the results section, which is interesting, but is a bit technical or abstract to people not familiar with CCA. Actually, it is not really before I read section 4.2.2 I started to understand what this actually was about. Then it also connected better to the research questions, than earlier in the results section. Again, it would help the reader better understand if there were some concrete examples of knowledge types/impact factors/questions etc. early on and/or throughout the manuscript, to make it easier to read and understand.

Related to this is another issue, I think the manuscript would become stronger if there is a better connection to the research question throughout the whole manuscript. My impression through the title, the aim section, and the research questions in 3.1, is that the study is mainly about forecast perception and factors driving uptake of information. This fits quite well with the topics discussed in the introduction. However, section 2, which I find interesting, is more about cultural dimensions, naturally the same with the methodology section (CCA) and discussion. Also, parts of the results (especially 4.2.1) are a bit technical and focus differences between groups and demographics, whereas the research questions are much more concrete about perceptions and usage - section 4.2.2 is more like what I expected to read. There might be something I miss out, or need to read more carefully, but at the moment I am wondering if the authors could consider to better connect what I believed the study was about (perceptions and uptake) and what I think part of the study is focusing (culture and differences between groups) such that it become more coherent. Maybe it needs some restructuring, or maybe it just needs to make it clearer through the title, introduction of research questions.

There are recommendations about how to provide information, but they are quite general (easy navigation, few clicks, accurate forecasts etc.). Hence, I am not sure how useful they are to service providers developing platforms. How many clicks are few clicks? What is easy navigation, and for who? What is an (in)accurate forecast? This makes me wonder who the study is for, operational people or researchers? If the study is aimed at operational meteorological services, to improve value of metocean forecast information, perhaps the study would have a bigger impact if more concrete recommendations can be suggested (if possible, given the data the authors have), and (as explained above), more examples related to the CCA is made throughout the manuscript. I am also wondering if it is possible from Table 2 to see which one is more important to the participants (is it related to the percentages)? e.g. visual experience and number of clicks can be leading the service provider in the same direction, but it can also be a contradiction or dilemma, and which one should they then focus?

Specific comments

This relates to the survey or the questions. When I read, some data/results come a bit surprising, because I couldn’t see the questions or topics being mentioned explicitly earlier. For example, in line 442, it says that the participants were questioned about their trust of their own NMHSs. Where can I see that question? Is it part of table 2.2 (are all questions asked there), or are additional questions also asked but not shown? That should be made clear in the manuscript.

I am a bit surprised that uncertainties related to climate change are part of the research questions. The title and introduction does not really give an impression that climate change is a topic, and I find little about that in the results as well, I think (until the end of section 4.2.2). Still, it is part of the discussion and conclusion. I think it needs to be clearer in the introduction that this topic is part of the study, since it does not directly relate to the perceptions and uptake of forecast information, at least not to me.

Line 98-99: A distinction between specialist users and the public is made, and I agree level of understanding can be an explainer. However, maybe it is worth mentioning that it can also be easier to agree upon communication with a specialist user group than the general public? Another point (related to this and lines 230-235, which I agree upon) is that some commercial users want/need to be efficient, they are not interested, it is just part of their work, whereas some recreational users are really interested, they don’t need to be effective. Hence, a strict categorisation is difficult, in some situations a person can be an interested specialist, in others spend little time. It can depend on the task, not only the person or group. (see the first paper suggested below for more details.)

Line 143 - would be nice if the authors could consider to give an example of language weaved into ocean-based references and symbolism.

Line 147 - explain short who Khoisan people are?

Research question 3.1: Studying forecasts (the content/information) or forecasting platforms? Could be worth clarifying throughout the manuscript.

I am sure it is a sufficient number of participants according to method, but still 31 from South Africa is not much in terms of absolute numbers. I just want to ask the authors to be careful in their language so they do not generalize the findings, e.g. line 257 (“while South African users” - should be participants?).

Figure 1G and line 280: It might be me not reading the text well enough, but is it clear whether these groups include both commercial and recreational users, or one of them (e.g. windsurfers or people having a windsurfers rental; commercial fishers, or people having fishing as a hobby etc.)?

Lines 285-290: If possible, a map showing the areas would be useful.

Line 465: A good explanation of what a red cross in Table 2 actually means. Perhaps something similar can be given earlier in the manuscript, to make it easier to read Table 2?

Line 512: There are cultural differences, yes. I am speculating - perhaps you know - are there also other differences (economical) steering if people have recreational use of the coast?

I want to suggest a few references that might be of interest to the authors:

Doksæter Sivle, A., & Kolstø, S. D. (2016). Use of online weather information in everyday decisionâmaking by laypeople and implications for communication of weather information. , (4), 650-662.

In Norwegian, a user survey from 2015 related to marine services (https://www.met.no/publikasjoner/met-info/met-info-2015, number 15/2015, Gjesdal et al.)
Citation: https://doi.org/10.5194/gc-2020-50-RC1
- CC1:
  'Reply on RC1', Christo Rautenbach, 18 Mar 2021
  
  Thank you very much for these wonderful comments. It will surely make the manuscript much better. We are in the process of addressing your comments. I have attached the requested participant distribution plots here as a start.
  
  Citation: https://doi.org/10.5194/gc-2020-50-CC1
  - RC2: 'Reply on CC1', Anders Doksæter Sivle, 18 Mar 2021
    
    Thank you for the nice maps!
    
    Citation: https://doi.org/10.5194/gc-2020-50-RC2
    
    AC1: 'Reply on RC2', Christo Rautenbach, 22 Jun 2021
    
    The comment was uploaded in the form of a supplement: https://gc.copernicus.org/preprints/gc-2020-50/gc-2020-50-AC1-supplement.pdf
    
    Citation: https://doi.org/10.5194/gc-2020-50-AC1
- RC3:
  'Reply on RC1', Anonymous Referee #2, 27 May 2021
  
  Thank you for the opportunity to review this manuscript.
  
  You have produced a paper on a very pertinent topic that, as you correctly identified, has not received a lot of attention thus far in the academic literature but is a topic that is highly relevant among specific communities of practice - in your case, the marine user community. I enjoyed reading about the approach you have taken and the potentially very promising comparative analysis.
  
  However, I was somewhat disappointed by how sloppily the manuscript was put together. There are numerous typos, punctuation errors and mistakes in syntax and grammar (see e.g., ll. 9, 20, 26, 71, 97, 108, 126,172, 256, 342, 345, 356, 357, 371, 403, 439, 463, 465, 471, 473, 477, 540 or 546), which thorough proof-reading should have revealed, especially since the lead author seems to be a native English speaker originally from South Africa. The abstract seems to have been put together in a hurry and is rather disjunct and unconvincing, especially since relevant context is not provided (e.g., what is the "proposed disconnect" you are referring to, and who "proposes" its existence?). An abstract should contain a short synopsis of the key conclusions reached, which are currently not highlighted in the abstract. Sadly, you are not selling your research convincingly if you do not place enough emphasis on a coherent, concise and convincing abstract.
  
  The contextual section 2 of the MS would be better placed in the introduction and before the aims to allow for a better flow from the aims to the methods section. Also note that what you present is a methods section rather than a methodology per se. Section 2 and the Introduction appear to simplify a bit too dramatically, at least for my taste, the character and history of New Zealand and South Africa. Claiming that the two countries are climatologically similar and at similar latitudes is like stating that France and Algeria are at similar latitudes. There are significant latitudinal differences between S.A. and NZ, with the latter also consisting of more than 2 islands as you claimed on p. 5. It might also be worth noting that one is an island state (NZ) and the other is not (S.A.) You refer to the coastlines of these two countries as "extreme", which made me wonder what you meant by that term.
  
  The methods section raised more questions than it answered. You are posing some interesting and certainly relevant research questions but it is not clear whether these were the questions guiding your overall work and the design of the questions, or whether they were the questions asked in the questionnaire itself. The latter seemed to be the case, which I have not seen done in other survey questionnaires. You also claim to have aimed to "test the differences between the social norms, values and attittudes" (l 170) in NZ and S.A. user groups. This would have been very interesting as well as ambitious, but nothing of what you present in the MS links back to norms, values and attitudes. In fact, you do not provide a definition of these terms nor do you apply any of the established psychological tests that are typically used to explore these aspects. The research process you describe in your methods section left me somewhat puzzled - why was your initial step to formulate research questions, when these should have been identified well before you even set out to think about the survey as surely the questions you ask would determine the most appropriate methods to employ rather than the other way around? You should also expain how many questions you asked in the survey, what type of questions, how you distributed the survey and to whom and most importantly, how you obtained informed consent and protected the rights of the participants. You should also note where you obtained Human Ethics Consent for the survey. With the lead author based in New Zealand, I take it as a given that this has been done and it should be noted in the MS, even if only in form of a footnote. As the data analysis is concerned, the readers would appreciate learning a bit more about Romney et al.'s (1986) consensus model and whether it is still considered cutting edge. What is a UCINET software package? What were the limitations of your analysis and research approach?
  
  Considering the relatively low number of participants, especially from South Africa, it would be prudent to discuss whether the results are actually comparable. You seem to simply assume that they are, but you do not even seem to have statistically significant sample sizes from S.A., especially not when diving them into recreational and commercial users. The figures you include in the paper should ideally be formatted in such a way that the different colours used in the pie charts can be easily distinguished. This is presently not the case, and I suggest linking the categories directly to the respective pie sections to make this clearer. You might also wish to separate the separate questions that you are presenting as subsections of Figure 1 into stand-alone figures, which would make referencing to specific parts of the figures much easier.
  
  In l 255 you claim that "[f]rom these results it seems that most people will only look at a forecast once a day..." - nothing that you present in your MS shows that you can make such a conclusion, and you may wish to examine a bit better how you derive this conclusion. You argue that "[f]air representation was also received from the other districts" (in New Zealand) (l 287) but with 87% of your participant from Auckland, the Waikato, Wellington and Northland, this is not feasible.
  
  The introduction to the CCA results need a bit more explanation of what exactly your process was and how you tested particinants' knowledge. You are referring to knowledge and knowledge questions but do not share those with the readers. Instead you are referring to user needs as "knowledge" but shouldn't this be rather classified as "perceptions or perspectives" seeing that it is highly subjective and will vary from participant to participant with no "right" or "wrong" option. Knowledge can only be tested if there are clear lines between what is a fact and what isn't, and perceptions cannot be evaluated for their "accuracy", nor can they be considered knowledge. How are you demonstrating, or calculating, consensus? What heuristics are you referring to (l 315) and what does "some level of consensus" (l 320) actually mean? What do the axes on the figures in section 4 depict? How have you calculated the consensus in Table 2, and why are in some cells the frequencies replaced by green or red ticks? Shouldn't the frequencies be shown as well? In l 403 you refer to "culturally correct answers" - surely this is a typo; if it isn't then I would strongly urge you to revisit some of the cultural geographical literature and reconsider the appropriateness of using such a term. You claim that users agreed on "a preferred forecast horizon (3-7 days)" (l 433), but in order to do this you must have provided other options. What were those? All in all, section 4 leaves quite a few questions for me, which I hope you can address in a revision of the MS.
  
  Similarly, the discussion and conclusion would benefit from a more critical examination of what you have actually done in your research (compared information obtained from two countries with relatively small samples) vs. what you claim (cross-sectoral and cross-cultural research). What you have done is an important step in the right direction and deserves to be published but I think it is naive to make it sound as 'grander' than it was. You refer to the users having had "a lot of experience with coastal and ocean activities..." (l 472) but it is not clear how and why one could arrive at this conclusion from the data you collected. What do you mean by "their interpolation" (l 479) or "users' decision quality" (l 530) - these terms will have to be defined more clearly.
  
  Overall, I think you have collected some interesting data that deserve to be published, and I am sure that you will be able to carefully review and revise your MS to bring it into a publishable form. I wish you all the best on this journey and look forward to seeing your work in the public realm.
  
  Citation: https://doi.org/10.5194/gc-2020-50-RC3
  - AC2: 'Reply on RC3', Christo Rautenbach, 22 Jun 2021
    
    The comment was uploaded in the form of a supplement: https://gc.copernicus.org/preprints/gc-2020-50/gc-2020-50-AC2-supplement.pdf
    
    Citation: https://doi.org/10.5194/gc-2020-50-AC2

Status: closed

RC1:
'Comment on gc-2020-50', Anders Doksæter Sivle, 04 Mar 2021
Overall, I like the manuscript. For example, I think it is a good idea to use an earlier study as a starting point, and compare with those results, as well as a comparison between two different countries on two different continents. I also like connections drawn between the perceptions and cultural similarities/differences, and I think some of the discussions related to these issues are new and interesting. Further, I like the idea of having a workshop with metservices to discuss topics and questions when preparing the study/survey. I do think that such a paper fits within the scope of the journal and will be interesting to readers of Geoscience communication as well as to the wider meteorological society. However, I also have some issues that I think the authors need to sort out before the manuscript is ready for publication (major revision required). Below you will find my comments. They are numerous, but you should not be scared; I’m not negative to the manuscript, I’m just engaged in the topic and want to contribute such that it can make a higher impact.

General comments

To me, and others unfamiliar with the methodology used in the study (I assume many from the meteorological services are), it would be good to get a better idea of the concept/method earlier in the manuscript. There are many paragraphs and sections mentioning “CCA” and “(shared) knowledge”, but I don’t really understand what it is before late in the results section when more concrete examples are given. Perhaps the authors could consider including an example of the result and which knowledge they are talking about already in the abstract. Now the abstract is describing the methodology, but little is said about the results or impact of the study, so including an example of a result could strengthen the abstract anyway, I think. The same can be said about the results section, which is interesting, but is a bit technical or abstract to people not familiar with CCA. Actually, it is not really before I read section 4.2.2 I started to understand what this actually was about. Then it also connected better to the research questions, than earlier in the results section. Again, it would help the reader better understand if there were some concrete examples of knowledge types/impact factors/questions etc. early on and/or throughout the manuscript, to make it easier to read and understand.

Related to this is another issue, I think the manuscript would become stronger if there is a better connection to the research question throughout the whole manuscript. My impression through the title, the aim section, and the research questions in 3.1, is that the study is mainly about forecast perception and factors driving uptake of information. This fits quite well with the topics discussed in the introduction. However, section 2, which I find interesting, is more about cultural dimensions, naturally the same with the methodology section (CCA) and discussion. Also, parts of the results (especially 4.2.1) are a bit technical and focus differences between groups and demographics, whereas the research questions are much more concrete about perceptions and usage - section 4.2.2 is more like what I expected to read. There might be something I miss out, or need to read more carefully, but at the moment I am wondering if the authors could consider to better connect what I believed the study was about (perceptions and uptake) and what I think part of the study is focusing (culture and differences between groups) such that it become more coherent. Maybe it needs some restructuring, or maybe it just needs to make it clearer through the title, introduction of research questions.

There are recommendations about how to provide information, but they are quite general (easy navigation, few clicks, accurate forecasts etc.). Hence, I am not sure how useful they are to service providers developing platforms. How many clicks are few clicks? What is easy navigation, and for who? What is an (in)accurate forecast? This makes me wonder who the study is for, operational people or researchers? If the study is aimed at operational meteorological services, to improve value of metocean forecast information, perhaps the study would have a bigger impact if more concrete recommendations can be suggested (if possible, given the data the authors have), and (as explained above), more examples related to the CCA is made throughout the manuscript. I am also wondering if it is possible from Table 2 to see which one is more important to the participants (is it related to the percentages)? e.g. visual experience and number of clicks can be leading the service provider in the same direction, but it can also be a contradiction or dilemma, and which one should they then focus?

Specific comments

This relates to the survey or the questions. When I read, some data/results come a bit surprising, because I couldn’t see the questions or topics being mentioned explicitly earlier. For example, in line 442, it says that the participants were questioned about their trust of their own NMHSs. Where can I see that question? Is it part of table 2.2 (are all questions asked there), or are additional questions also asked but not shown? That should be made clear in the manuscript.

I am a bit surprised that uncertainties related to climate change are part of the research questions. The title and introduction does not really give an impression that climate change is a topic, and I find little about that in the results as well, I think (until the end of section 4.2.2). Still, it is part of the discussion and conclusion. I think it needs to be clearer in the introduction that this topic is part of the study, since it does not directly relate to the perceptions and uptake of forecast information, at least not to me.

Line 98-99: A distinction between specialist users and the public is made, and I agree level of understanding can be an explainer. However, maybe it is worth mentioning that it can also be easier to agree upon communication with a specialist user group than the general public? Another point (related to this and lines 230-235, which I agree upon) is that some commercial users want/need to be efficient, they are not interested, it is just part of their work, whereas some recreational users are really interested, they don’t need to be effective. Hence, a strict categorisation is difficult, in some situations a person can be an interested specialist, in others spend little time. It can depend on the task, not only the person or group. (see the first paper suggested below for more details.)

Line 143 - would be nice if the authors could consider to give an example of language weaved into ocean-based references and symbolism.

Line 147 - explain short who Khoisan people are?

Research question 3.1: Studying forecasts (the content/information) or forecasting platforms? Could be worth clarifying throughout the manuscript.

I am sure it is a sufficient number of participants according to method, but still 31 from South Africa is not much in terms of absolute numbers. I just want to ask the authors to be careful in their language so they do not generalize the findings, e.g. line 257 (“while South African users” - should be participants?).

Figure 1G and line 280: It might be me not reading the text well enough, but is it clear whether these groups include both commercial and recreational users, or one of them (e.g. windsurfers or people having a windsurfers rental; commercial fishers, or people having fishing as a hobby etc.)?

Lines 285-290: If possible, a map showing the areas would be useful.

Line 465: A good explanation of what a red cross in Table 2 actually means. Perhaps something similar can be given earlier in the manuscript, to make it easier to read Table 2?

Line 512: There are cultural differences, yes. I am speculating - perhaps you know - are there also other differences (economical) steering if people have recreational use of the coast?

I want to suggest a few references that might be of interest to the authors:

Doksæter Sivle, A., & Kolstø, S. D. (2016). Use of online weather information in everyday decisionâmaking by laypeople and implications for communication of weather information. , (4), 650-662.

In Norwegian, a user survey from 2015 related to marine services (https://www.met.no/publikasjoner/met-info/met-info-2015, number 15/2015, Gjesdal et al.)
Citation: https://doi.org/10.5194/gc-2020-50-RC1
- CC1:
  'Reply on RC1', Christo Rautenbach, 18 Mar 2021
  
  Thank you very much for these wonderful comments. It will surely make the manuscript much better. We are in the process of addressing your comments. I have attached the requested participant distribution plots here as a start.
  
  Citation: https://doi.org/10.5194/gc-2020-50-CC1
  - RC2: 'Reply on CC1', Anders Doksæter Sivle, 18 Mar 2021
    
    Thank you for the nice maps!
    
    Citation: https://doi.org/10.5194/gc-2020-50-RC2
    
    AC1: 'Reply on RC2', Christo Rautenbach, 22 Jun 2021
    
    The comment was uploaded in the form of a supplement: https://gc.copernicus.org/preprints/gc-2020-50/gc-2020-50-AC1-supplement.pdf
    
    Citation: https://doi.org/10.5194/gc-2020-50-AC1
- RC3:
  'Reply on RC1', Anonymous Referee #2, 27 May 2021
  
  Thank you for the opportunity to review this manuscript.
  
  You have produced a paper on a very pertinent topic that, as you correctly identified, has not received a lot of attention thus far in the academic literature but is a topic that is highly relevant among specific communities of practice - in your case, the marine user community. I enjoyed reading about the approach you have taken and the potentially very promising comparative analysis.
  
  However, I was somewhat disappointed by how sloppily the manuscript was put together. There are numerous typos, punctuation errors and mistakes in syntax and grammar (see e.g., ll. 9, 20, 26, 71, 97, 108, 126,172, 256, 342, 345, 356, 357, 371, 403, 439, 463, 465, 471, 473, 477, 540 or 546), which thorough proof-reading should have revealed, especially since the lead author seems to be a native English speaker originally from South Africa. The abstract seems to have been put together in a hurry and is rather disjunct and unconvincing, especially since relevant context is not provided (e.g., what is the "proposed disconnect" you are referring to, and who "proposes" its existence?). An abstract should contain a short synopsis of the key conclusions reached, which are currently not highlighted in the abstract. Sadly, you are not selling your research convincingly if you do not place enough emphasis on a coherent, concise and convincing abstract.
  
  The contextual section 2 of the MS would be better placed in the introduction and before the aims to allow for a better flow from the aims to the methods section. Also note that what you present is a methods section rather than a methodology per se. Section 2 and the Introduction appear to simplify a bit too dramatically, at least for my taste, the character and history of New Zealand and South Africa. Claiming that the two countries are climatologically similar and at similar latitudes is like stating that France and Algeria are at similar latitudes. There are significant latitudinal differences between S.A. and NZ, with the latter also consisting of more than 2 islands as you claimed on p. 5. It might also be worth noting that one is an island state (NZ) and the other is not (S.A.) You refer to the coastlines of these two countries as "extreme", which made me wonder what you meant by that term.
  
  The methods section raised more questions than it answered. You are posing some interesting and certainly relevant research questions but it is not clear whether these were the questions guiding your overall work and the design of the questions, or whether they were the questions asked in the questionnaire itself. The latter seemed to be the case, which I have not seen done in other survey questionnaires. You also claim to have aimed to "test the differences between the social norms, values and attittudes" (l 170) in NZ and S.A. user groups. This would have been very interesting as well as ambitious, but nothing of what you present in the MS links back to norms, values and attitudes. In fact, you do not provide a definition of these terms nor do you apply any of the established psychological tests that are typically used to explore these aspects. The research process you describe in your methods section left me somewhat puzzled - why was your initial step to formulate research questions, when these should have been identified well before you even set out to think about the survey as surely the questions you ask would determine the most appropriate methods to employ rather than the other way around? You should also expain how many questions you asked in the survey, what type of questions, how you distributed the survey and to whom and most importantly, how you obtained informed consent and protected the rights of the participants. You should also note where you obtained Human Ethics Consent for the survey. With the lead author based in New Zealand, I take it as a given that this has been done and it should be noted in the MS, even if only in form of a footnote. As the data analysis is concerned, the readers would appreciate learning a bit more about Romney et al.'s (1986) consensus model and whether it is still considered cutting edge. What is a UCINET software package? What were the limitations of your analysis and research approach?
  
  Considering the relatively low number of participants, especially from South Africa, it would be prudent to discuss whether the results are actually comparable. You seem to simply assume that they are, but you do not even seem to have statistically significant sample sizes from S.A., especially not when diving them into recreational and commercial users. The figures you include in the paper should ideally be formatted in such a way that the different colours used in the pie charts can be easily distinguished. This is presently not the case, and I suggest linking the categories directly to the respective pie sections to make this clearer. You might also wish to separate the separate questions that you are presenting as subsections of Figure 1 into stand-alone figures, which would make referencing to specific parts of the figures much easier.
  
  In l 255 you claim that "[f]rom these results it seems that most people will only look at a forecast once a day..." - nothing that you present in your MS shows that you can make such a conclusion, and you may wish to examine a bit better how you derive this conclusion. You argue that "[f]air representation was also received from the other districts" (in New Zealand) (l 287) but with 87% of your participant from Auckland, the Waikato, Wellington and Northland, this is not feasible.
  
  The introduction to the CCA results need a bit more explanation of what exactly your process was and how you tested particinants' knowledge. You are referring to knowledge and knowledge questions but do not share those with the readers. Instead you are referring to user needs as "knowledge" but shouldn't this be rather classified as "perceptions or perspectives" seeing that it is highly subjective and will vary from participant to participant with no "right" or "wrong" option. Knowledge can only be tested if there are clear lines between what is a fact and what isn't, and perceptions cannot be evaluated for their "accuracy", nor can they be considered knowledge. How are you demonstrating, or calculating, consensus? What heuristics are you referring to (l 315) and what does "some level of consensus" (l 320) actually mean? What do the axes on the figures in section 4 depict? How have you calculated the consensus in Table 2, and why are in some cells the frequencies replaced by green or red ticks? Shouldn't the frequencies be shown as well? In l 403 you refer to "culturally correct answers" - surely this is a typo; if it isn't then I would strongly urge you to revisit some of the cultural geographical literature and reconsider the appropriateness of using such a term. You claim that users agreed on "a preferred forecast horizon (3-7 days)" (l 433), but in order to do this you must have provided other options. What were those? All in all, section 4 leaves quite a few questions for me, which I hope you can address in a revision of the MS.
  
  Similarly, the discussion and conclusion would benefit from a more critical examination of what you have actually done in your research (compared information obtained from two countries with relatively small samples) vs. what you claim (cross-sectoral and cross-cultural research). What you have done is an important step in the right direction and deserves to be published but I think it is naive to make it sound as 'grander' than it was. You refer to the users having had "a lot of experience with coastal and ocean activities..." (l 472) but it is not clear how and why one could arrive at this conclusion from the data you collected. What do you mean by "their interpolation" (l 479) or "users' decision quality" (l 530) - these terms will have to be defined more clearly.
  
  Overall, I think you have collected some interesting data that deserve to be published, and I am sure that you will be able to carefully review and revise your MS to bring it into a publishable form. I wish you all the best on this journey and look forward to seeing your work in the public realm.
  
  Citation: https://doi.org/10.5194/gc-2020-50-RC3
  - AC2: 'Reply on RC3', Christo Rautenbach, 22 Jun 2021
    
    The comment was uploaded in the form of a supplement: https://gc.copernicus.org/preprints/gc-2020-50/gc-2020-50-AC2-supplement.pdf
    
    Citation: https://doi.org/10.5194/gc-2020-50-AC2

Christo Rautenbach and Berill Blair

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Short summary

The study aims to address a proposed disconnect between science and the public. In this case, marine meteorological information and the users of these data. Here, the focus is not only on the perceptions, usability and uptake of extreme event forecasts but rather focused on general, everyday situations. A survey was conducted in two southern hemisphere countries, South Africa and New Zealand and subgroups within the communities (recreational and commercial users) were identified and elucidated.


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