Dear authors,

We have received three reviewers’ reports. Two reviewers are mostly happy with the corrections made, but reviewer 2 still has a number of recommendations how the ms. can be further improved (see attached). I encourage you to resubmit your ms. with the corrections made in line of the reviewer’s remarks (where appropriate).

Kind regards,

Vasiliy Vlasenko
NPG editor

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The authors have done substantial effort to improve the paper. They reduced the number of figures by 4, but increased the number of pages by 3, and hence, it still feels a little long. My main criticism is that the justification for this paper is not well expressed in the introduction. The only line in the introduction that touches on this is line 109 "Thus it is important to understand their shoaling dynamics." Can the authors write what the gaps are in the literature and how this paper addresses these gaps? I recommend publishing after shortening the paper and improving the justification.

Minor points:
L121. English? “Resolutions tests”

L160-172. Is all this detail needed about the bathymetry? Removing it makes the paper shorter and less tedious to read. Rephrase it like “h15 has a shallower bump and is steeper than h0“.

L186. Please provide formulas for APE and KE.

L217. Define “polarity”

L245. English? “less that”

L261. “and this is the environment it propagates in” I am not sure what the authors say here. I am also confused about the “pedestal”. Is it the square wave with elevated deep water density? In Figure 4e, is the first pedestal between 78 and 80 km and the second between 75 and 77 km? Can the authors also define it better? Maybe show in a Figure 4 what the pedestal is? Then phrases like “which has now propagated into the pedestal” and “propagating on the wave pedestal” may also become clear. What feature is propagating on the pedestal?

L271. The wave speed equals the particle speed. Does this lead to overturns in the second pedestal?

L287. English? “providing”

L309. “second box” (or second wave for that matter in other places). The authors should include “from the left or right” to avoid confusion.

L311. I do not see downwelling because of the colorscale. Also I do not know at what depth. At the bump or higher in the water column?

L387. You mean Figure 9d?

L417. Are the authors not precise enough? A solitary wave must scatter and reflect for (super)critical slopes?

L424. Do the authors mean kinetic and available potential energy?

L425. What is the definition of mass and how is it different than APE?

L473. “except that the maximum currents occur in greater depths than do the maximum wave amplitudes” This is always the case for a first mode wave, is it not? Maximum velocities at the surface and bottom and largest vertical wave amplitudes at zero crossings? You expect them to occur at different depths.

L523. English? “vertically”

544. Can the authors indicate what terms in the momentum equation are responsible for this difference in shoaling between model and theory?

L672. English? “various in stratification”

L675. The shoaling waves in the simulations are internal tides because they are generated at Luzon strait by the surface tides. I guess the authors are referring to locally generated tidal internal waves? Please clarify. You may also say that undulations in stratification due to subtidal flow are missing in the simulations.

L743. Use “effects”

L789. I would argue the opposite that if the bumps are a 3D phenomena, the flow could go around them and the response to the waves would be smaller than in a purely 2D bump (no variation along y), i.e. in a 2D model, you may see a stronger response.

L829. English? “in out”

Dear authors,

I am pleased to inform you that your paper NPG-2014-54 "Shoaling of internal solitary waves at the ASIAEX site in the South China Sea" has been accepted for publication in Nonlinear Processes in Geophysics.

I thank you for submitting your best work to the Nonlinear Processes in Geophysics.

Sincerely,

NPG editor
Vasiliy Vlasenko