Our paper describes a methodology to compute gridded air-sea fluxes that was used in the context of the POMME experiment, an experiment dedicated to the subduction in the North-Eastern Atlantic during the period 2000-2001. The importance of surface fluxes for this experiment and for forcing numerical models used by a large part of the scientists involved in this experiment are the main reasons why the paper is highly cited. Note also that compared with other experiments dedicated to air/sea experiment, POMME (to my knowledge) is the only experiment at sea during which a huge amount of data dedicated to air-sea interactions were collected over more than one year. Due to this richness, a large effort was made to use all this data and to establish an accurate sea surface budget that can be used as a reference for further air/sea interaction studies.

I don't think the methodology adopted in the paper is really a new discovery. However, systematic comparisons and cross validations of data intervening for computing air-sea fluxes are presented. I rather think that it is more that the subject and methodology of the POMME experiment as a whole is really new for studying air-sea interactions. We simply tried to do our best to evaluate this important data set.

We attempted to establish a budget characterizing the transfer of heat, water, and movement between the ocean and the atmosphere in the North-Eastern Atlantic. This subject is very important in order to characterize how waters in contact with the atmosphere during the winter season will be subducted and then transport specific properties during a certain time in the deep ocean.

I was involved in this research because it has been one of my primary research fields for several years. In the past, we developed specific tools and methodologies in association with other French research teams. We also participated in other dedicated experiments where this knowledge was specifically appreciated by my colleagues so that I could integrate the staff for organizing a part of the POMME experiment, and then judge the pertinence of which approach would be best to use in order to answer its objectives.

For the moment, this research is dedicated to air-sea interaction in a specific part of the Northeastern Atlantic. The aim would be to develop the same kind of methodologies in other oceanic basins, for instance, during the upcoming EGEE experiment—during 2006 in the Gulf of Guinea—an experiment associated with the AMMA international program dedicated to the study of the West African Monsoon. Currently, the implications of our efforts strictly concern scientific objectives. If these results could be used by climate modelers to improve their modeling and simulations, then I assume that actual societal or political implications could evolve!