Slow Slip Events Associated with Seismic Activity in the Hikurangi Subduction Zone, New Zealand, from 2019 to 2022

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The paper submitted by Yan and colleagues tried to use the observations during the 2019 to 2022 to demonstrate the relationship between slow slip events and seismic activity. It is an interesting work, and well-written, which, accordingly, fits for publication in the journal Remote Sensing. However, from the abstract and conclusion parts we can’t find the novelty, in another word, the main findings of this work easily. Indeed, the authors identified several SSEs, but what’re their most impressive characteristic features? What we can learn from this contribution remains unclear. I feel that more concise or direct expressions on this issue are needed in the revised manuscript. More in-depth discussions become necessary. Also, the authors need to re-consider the arrangement of figures. For example, figure 2, the location map is the smallest but placed in the center. Figure 8 is too wide in size, and hence too small to read. You can display the results separately.

The quality of Englsih Language is acceptable.

Author Response

We greatly appreciate your valuable comment. Please refer to the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

The author has invested a considerable amount of work and effort into this manuscript. Specifically, around eight episodes of slow slip subevents were identified from GPS time series, and these signals were analyzed using a NIF methodology. The study also examines the spatiotemporal evolution characteristics of the SSEs and investigates their relationship with subsequent seismic events. While this work may not have yielded groundbreaking discoveries, it nonetheless serves as a crucial contribution to future research on slow slip events in the Hikurangi subduction zone in New Zealand. With some minor revisions, I am confident that this article can be prepared for publication.

Minor comments:

Lines 141-142：In author’s saying, the postseismic deformation signals and seasonal signals were too small to be neglected in this work. In fact, an Mw 7.3 earthquake on March, 2021, occurred on the southeast North Island, and the author should provide a brief description about the influence of this event in this part.

Lines 185-186: this sentence has a wrong wringing, change it to “the strike angle is set to 221°, the sip angle is set to 12°, and the slip angle is set

to 120°”

Lines 359: please change the “trigger” to “triggered”

Lines 381-388: Author has analyzed so many conclusions about the relationship between SSEs and pre- or post-SSE’s seismicity from previous studies, but, different subduction zones, such as Japan, Mexico, have different influence on such relationship. We suggested that the relative discussions should be involved in this part.

Figure 4: Please ensure consistent font size in the text, such as Depth (km). And please added some statements associated with the symbols above the figure in caption.

Author Response

We greatly appreciate your valuable comment. Please refer to the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 3 Report

This manuscript describes the analysis of GPS data related to slow slip events in the Hikurangi subduction zone from 2019 to 2022 using the Network Inversion Filter and the comparison of these results with seismic activity in the area. The topic is important, but it seems to me that it does not fit into the special issue "Applications of GNSS Reflectometry for Earth Observation III".

Anyway, I think the article should be improved before publication. My main concerns are:

- some important information about the GPS data analysis are missing;  especially the inversion of the GPS data lacks resolution and uncertainty analysis;

- the analysis of the seismic catalog has many limitations: many details about the catalog used are missing (at least completeness and localization algorithm), it is not clear how “pre-SSE” and “post-SSE” periods are defined, how seismic activity is calculated and what is the confidence interval of these estimates.

Detailed comments are in the attached file.

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

We greatly appreciate your valuable comment. Please refer to the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Round 2

Reviewer 3 Report

The authors improved the manuscript sufficiently to warrant publication.