A powerful lidar system capable of 1&thinsp;h measurements of water vapour in the troposphere and the lower stratosphere as well as the temperature in the upper stratosphere and mesosphere

Klanner, Lisa; Höveler, Katharina; Khordakova, Dina; Perfahl, Matthias; Rolf, Christian; Trickl, Thomas; Vogelmann, Hannes

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/amt-14-531-2021

Articles | Volume 14, issue 1

https://doi.org/10.5194/amt-14-531-2021

© Author(s) 2021. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/amt-14-531-2021

© Author(s) 2021. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 14, issue 1

Research article

|

26 Jan 2021

Research article |

| 26 Jan 2021

A powerful lidar system capable of 1 h measurements of water vapour in the troposphere and the lower stratosphere as well as the temperature in the upper stratosphere and mesosphere

Lisa Klanner, Katharina Höveler, Dina Khordakova, Matthias Perfahl, Christian Rolf, Thomas Trickl, and Hannes Vogelmann

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Final revised paper (published on 26 Jan 2021)
Preprint (discussion started on 28 May 2020)

Interactive discussion

Status: closed

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

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RC1: 'Review of AMT-2020-90 titled “A powerful lidar system capable of one-hour measurements of water vapour in the troposphere and the lower stratosphere as well as the temperature in the upper stratosphere and mesosphere” by Klanner et al.', Anonymous Referee #3, 11 Aug 2020
- AC1: 'Reply to Rev. 1 + 3', Thomas Trickl, 26 Oct 2020
RC2: 'Review of AMTD Manuscript entitled “A powerful lidar system capable of one-hour measurements of water vapour in the troposphere and the lower stratosphere as well as the temperature in the upper stratosphere and mesosphere" by Klanner et al.', Anonymous Referee #1, 25 Aug 2020
- AC2: 'Reply', Thomas Trickl, 26 Oct 2020

Peer-review completion

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

AR by Katja Gänger on behalf of the Authors (29 Oct 2020) Author's response

ED: Reconsider after major revisions (06 Nov 2020) by Robert Sica

ED: Referee Nomination & Report Request started (09 Nov 2020) by Robert Sica

RR by Anonymous Referee #1 (18 Nov 2020)

Suggestions for revision or reasons for rejection

Although some efforts have been made to address some of the reviewers’ concerns about length and detail, to my opinion the revised version remained somewhat at a status quo. Two reviewers have noted that the manuscript was too detailed, to a point that the reader eventually can lose focus, not foreseeing the actual objectives of these instrument development efforts. My suggestion to move some content into Supplementary material was simply rejected by the authors. Also, several figures that I recommended to just move out or delete are still in version 4. Two examples are the unnecessary Fig 8 and 9, which are already published elsewhere.

All in all, my opinion is that not enough efforts were made to shorten and refocus the content of the manuscript to the description of a “live” instrument with clear scientific objectives. These things said, I understand that in some cases, detailed descriptions of experimental development can be a good thing, and this might be an acceptable path forward. I therefore recommend further minor revisions and recommend the manuscript to be accepted after the following revisions are made:

1) Shorten section 3.4, remove Figs 8 and 9. Refer to original figures and text published elsewhere, and shorten the corresponding section so that only the type of equipment and final performance is mentioned. There is no need to repeat such technical details already published elsewhere.

2) Move section 4.4 (lidar signal simulation) BEFORE the instrumental development sections. This section/paragraph and the corresponding Fig 10 can be included at the end of the introduction, or as its own section, to introduce the technical requirements of the system. The authors themselves state “Before finalizing the lidar design a number of simulations of the system performance were made”, clearly showing that it is more logical to discuss the simulations first as a mean to determine the required specifications of the system, these latter being detailed afterwards in the manuscript.

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ED: Publish subject to minor revisions (review by editor) (18 Nov 2020) by Robert Sica

AR by Natascha Töpfer on behalf of the Authors (30 Nov 2020) Author's response

ED: Publish as is (04 Dec 2020) by Robert Sica

Post-review adjustments

AA: Author's adjustment | EA: Editor approval

AA by Thomas Trickl on behalf of the Authors (22 Jan 2021) Author's adjustment

EA: Adjustments approved (22 Jan 2021) by Robert Sica

Short summary

The importance of water vapour as the most influential greenhouse gas and for air composition calls for detailed investigations. The details of the highly inhomogeneous distribution of water vapour can be determined with lidar, the very low concentrations at high altitudes imposing a major challenge. An existing water-vapour lidar in the Bavarian Alps was recently complemented by a powerful Raman lidar that provides water vapour up to 20 km and temperature up to 90 km within just 1 h.