Evaluation of cloud properties from reanalyses over East Asia with a radiance-based approach

Yao, Bin; Liu, Chao; Yin, Yan; Liu, Zhiquan; Shi, Chunxiang; Iwabuchi, Hironobu; Weng, Fuzhong

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/amt-13-1033-2020

Articles | Volume 13, issue 3

https://doi.org/10.5194/amt-13-1033-2020

© Author(s) 2020. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/amt-13-1033-2020

© Author(s) 2020. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 13, issue 3

Research article

|

04 Mar 2020

Research article |

| 04 Mar 2020

Evaluation of cloud properties from reanalyses over East Asia with a radiance-based approach

Bin Yao, Chao Liu, Yan Yin, Zhiquan Liu, Chunxiang Shi, Hironobu Iwabuchi, and Fuzhong Weng

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Final revised paper (published on 04 Mar 2020)
Preprint (discussion started on 05 Sep 2019)

Interactive discussion

Status: closed

AC: Author comment | RC: Referee comment | SC: Short comment | EC: Editor comment

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- Supplement

RC1: 'comment on "Assessment of cloud properties from the reanalysis with satellite observations over East Asia"', Anonymous Referee #2, 30 Oct 2019
- AC1: 'Response to RC1', Chao Liu, 06 Jan 2020
RC2: 'Review comments on “Assessment of cloud properties from the reanalysis with satellite observations over East Asia” by Yao et al.', Anonymous Referee #3, 22 Dec 2019
- AC2: 'Response to RC2', Chao Liu, 06 Jan 2020

Peer-review completion

AR: Author's response | RR: Referee report | ED: Editor decision

AR by Chao Liu on behalf of the Authors (06 Jan 2020) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Referee Nomination & Report Request started (13 Jan 2020) by Joanna Joiner

RR by Anonymous Referee #2 (21 Jan 2020)

RR by Anonymous Referee #3 (23 Jan 2020)

Suggestions for revision or reasons for rejection

Review Comments of “Assessment of cloud properties from the reanalysis with satellite
observations over East Asia” by Yao et al.

General Comments:
I think after the first round of review and revision, the manuscript is greatly improved and I believe it is close to be ready for publication. The authors mostly addressed my questions well and I have no further comments on those questions. But I still have a few more comments that I think will be useful for the manuscript improvements.

1. I think the title of the manuscript can be revised to illustrate the highlight of this study by including “radiance-based approach” term in the title, for example, “Assessment of cloud properties from the reanalysis with satellite observations over East Asia from a radiance-based evaluation approach”. In this way, the readers could easily distinguish this paper from the papers using conventional “retrieval-based approach”.

2. In the revised manuscript of line 276, the authors mentioned “To better illustrate the differences between cloudy and clear pixels, we distinguish them based on integrated column cloud optical depth in each pixel of 0.1”. This kind of treating obvious will omit a large amount of cloudy pixels with low optical depth, especially the thin cirrus clouds. Could the authors estimate how this choice of cloud-clear pixel threshold will influence the results?

3. This manuscript still has a lot of typos and errors, and thus I suggest the authors thoroughly check their paper for the small typos. For example, in the abstract, quite a few acronyms are actually not needed to be defined at all, because they are never used again, i.e., RTM, AHI, BTDs. And in the main text, many acronyms are defined too many times (more than once), such as AHI, again. And in line 349, “clear seasonable variation” – I think the authors mean “clear seasonal variation”? Mostly, such typos are small errors, but they just make the paper look bad. I hope the authors could take the chance to polish the paper before it is finally accepted for publication.

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ED: Publish subject to minor revisions (review by editor) (23 Jan 2020) by Joanna Joiner

AR by Chao Liu on behalf of the Authors (28 Jan 2020) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Publish as is (30 Jan 2020) by Joanna Joiner

AR by Chao Liu on behalf of the Authors (01 Feb 2020) Manuscript

Short summary

Due to the complex spatiotemporal and physical properties of clouds, their quantitative depictions in different atmospheric reanalysis datasets are still highly uncertain. A radiance-based evaluation approach is developed to evaluate the quality of cloud properties by directly comparing them with satellite radiance observations. ERA5 and CRA are found to have great capability in representing the cloudy atmosphere over East Asia, and MERRA-2 tends to slightly overestimate clouds over the region.