Characteristics and performance of wind profiles as observed by the radar wind profiler network of China

Liu, Boming; Guo, Jianping; Gong, Wei; Shi, Lijuan; Zhang, Yong; Ma, Yingying

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/amt-13-4589-2020

Articles | Volume 13, issue 8

https://doi.org/10.5194/amt-13-4589-2020

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

https://doi.org/10.5194/amt-13-4589-2020

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

Articles | Volume 13, issue 8

Research article

|

25 Aug 2020

Research article |

| 25 Aug 2020

Characteristics and performance of wind profiles as observed by the radar wind profiler network of China

Boming Liu, Jianping Guo, Wei Gong, Lijuan Shi, Yong Zhang, and Yingying Ma

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Final revised paper (published on 25 Aug 2020)
Supplement to the final revised paper
Preprint (discussion started on 06 Mar 2020)

Interactive discussion

Status: closed

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

- Printer-friendly version

- Supplement

RC1: 'Comments on amt-2020-75', Anonymous Referee #1, 25 Mar 2020
- AC3: 'Reply to reviewer 1's comments.', Jianping Guo, 20 May 2020
RC2: 'Characteristics and performance of vertical winds as observed by the radar wind profiler network of China', Anonymous Referee #2, 27 Mar 2020
- AC1: 'Reply to reviewer 2's comments', Jianping Guo, 20 May 2020
AC2: 'Reply to reviewer 1's comments.', Jianping Guo, 20 May 2020

Peer-review completion

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

AR by Jianping Guo on behalf of the Authors (20 May 2020) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Referee Nomination & Report Request started (10 Jun 2020) by Ad Stoffelen

RR by Anonymous Referee #1 (19 Jun 2020)

RR by Anonymous Referee #2 (22 Jun 2020)

Suggestions for revision or reasons for rejection

The manuscript has been improved from the first version and should be acceptable
after minor changes.

There are two very recent publications that should be useful to the authors
(full details below). Hersbach et al (2020, QJRMS - Early View) describes
ERA5 and should certainly be referenced. In the text most references to
ECMWF should be to ERA5.
Rennie and Isaksen (2020, ECMWF TM 864) describes the impact of Aeolus winds
in the operational ECMWF NWP system.

1, 23 'The wind profiles can serve as important input dataset assimilated into
numerical weather prediction systems at both regional and global scales.'
- I have been thinking about this, is it talking about wind profiles in general
or the Chinese boundary layer wind profiles in particular?
The results of Rennie and Isaksen (2020) support the importance of wind profiles
in general, but most of the impact comes from the winds in the upper- and mid-troposphere
(eg their FSOI plots in Figures 64 and 65) - and I think this also applies to
radiosonde and aircraft winds.
I think the authors should either a) delete the sentence or b) state something like
'Boundary layer wind profiles can provide useful input to numerical weather prediction
systems at regional scales.' I don't feel that evidence has been provided to
support the claim of 'important input'.

2, 2 'It is increasingly recognized that atmospheric wind profiles and vertical wind shear'
- Delete 'the' and 'its' as above (English)

3, 7-12 'Moreover ... Zhai et al., 2020).' I think these are all ALADIN/Aeolus related
missions, except for the Weissmann paper. They are using lidars on research aircraft
which should be made clear. To me there seem to be too many references which are not
directly related to boundary layer wind profilers. I suggest the deletion of the first
sentence 'Moreover ... 2005).' and associated references. Keep/modify the second sentence.

3, 25 'To make the most out of the best' - 'To combine the best'

5, 1 'which desperately needs the vertical wind observations' - delete as this
doesn't seem to follow (I am tempted to say 'desperately needs less pollution').

5, 11 '2008, when there are 5 sites' - 2008, when there were 5 sites'

7, 11 'Due to' - 'Because'

9, 12 'and that from ECMWF' - 'and that from ERA5' (similarly below)

10, 5 'difference in zonal direction' - 'differences in latitude bands'

11, 5 'Beijing time' - please specify how many hours this differs from UTC

13, 9 'vertical wind speed' Yes wind profilers can measure the vertical component of
the wind, but no results have been presented for it and it isn't clear how useful it is.
Either omit 'vertical wind speed' or mention these caveats.

16, 19 'Haseler ...' No longer referenced, omit

Supplement - I was pleased to see this table added.
I suggest that the latitude and longitude should be given to two or three decimal places.
The first ID '16078' stands out as different - is this correct?

New references

M P Rennie and L Isaksen, 2020: The NWP impact of Aeolus Level-2B winds at ECMWF.
ECMWF Technical Memo 864

The ERA5 global reanalysis
Hans Hersbach Bill Bell Paul Berrisford Shoji Hirahara András Horányi Joaquín Muñoz-Sabater Julien Nicolas Carole Peubey Raluca Radu Dinand Schepers Adrian Simmons Cornel Soci Saleh Abdalla Xavier Abellan Gianpaolo Balsamo
Peter Bechtold Gionata Biavati Jean Bidlot Massimo Bonavita Giovanna De Chiara Per Dahlgren Dick Dee
Michail Diamantakis Rossana Dragani Johannes Flemming Richard Forbes Manuel Fuentes Alan Geer Leo Haimberger Sean Healy Robin J. Hogan Elías Hólm Marta Janisková Sarah Keeley Patrick Laloyaux Philippe Lopez Cristina Lupu
Gabor Radnoti Patricia de Rosnay Iryna Rozum Freja Vamborg Sebastien Villaume Jean-Noël Thépaut

Quarterly Journal of the Royal Meteorological Society Early View
First published: 17 May 2020

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ED: Publish subject to minor revisions (review by editor) (30 Jun 2020) by Ad Stoffelen

AR by Jianping Guo on behalf of the Authors (03 Jul 2020) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Publish as is (16 Jul 2020) by Ad Stoffelen

AR by Jianping Guo on behalf of the Authors (18 Jul 2020) Manuscript

Short summary

Vertical wind profiles are crucial to a wide range of atmospheric disciplines. However, the wind profile across China remains poorly understood. Here we reveal the salient features of winds from the radar wind profile of China, including the main instruments, spatial coverage and sampling frequency. This work is expected to allow the public and scientific community to be more familiar with the nationwide network and encourage the use of these valuable data in future research and applications.