Spatiotemporal Characteristics of Soil Moisture and Land–Atmosphere Coupling over the Tibetan Plateau Derived from Three Gridded Datasets
, Yuanyuan Song 1,2 and Qianqian Mao 1,2Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
This study used in situ observation data from nine stations and TC to quantify the accuracy and consistency of the gridded SM products from ERA5, GLDAS, and SMAP. The authors examined the spatiotemporal characteristics of warm season SM and land‒atmosphere coupling on the TP. This is an interesting piece of work the main message of which should be published. I think this paper can be accepted after some minor revision.
1. Please give the climatology of SM from stations and three gridded datasets before analyze the Bias, RMSE, and ubRMSE of product-derived SM relative to observed SM.
2. Please add the unit (m3 m-3 ) in Figure 2.
3. Lin433: The decadal wetting over the western TP has been confirmed by the previous studies, such as Sun et al., 2020 (Why Has the Inner Tibetan Plateau Become Wetter since the Mid-1990s?). I think the ERA5 is better than GLDAS in presenting the long term trends of SM and precipitation over the TP.
4. The structure of *Article* should be included complete "Introduction-Materials and Methods-Results-Discussion-Conclusions", please note "Results", "Discussion" and "Conclusions" should be a self-stand section; please revise accordingly.
Author Response
Point 1: Please give the climatology of SM from stations and three gridded datasets before analyze the Bias, RMSE, and ubRMSE of product-derived SM relative to observed SM.
Response 1: The climatology of SM from stations and three gridded datasets have been added in Figure 2a.
Point 2: Please add the unit (m3 m-3 ) in Figure 2.
Response 2: The unit has been added.
Point 3: Lin433: The decadal wetting over the western TP has been confirmed by the previous studies, such as Sun et al., 2020 (Why Has the Inner Tibetan Plateau Become Wetter since the Mid-1990s?). I think the ERA5 is better than GLDAS in presenting the long term trends of SM and precipitation over the TP.
Response 3: Thank you for the recommedation. The paper has been cited in the paragraph and the sentence has been modified.
Point 4: The structure of *Article* should be included complete "Introduction-Materials and Methods-Results-Discussion-Conclusions", please note "Results", "Discussion" and "Conclusions" should be a self-stand section; please revise accordingly.
Response 4: The structure of manuscript has been revised.
Reviewer 2 Report
I have not much to write here. This is a superb manuscript. It is well written and nicely structured. It is extremely clear in its presentation of the ideas it contains.
My only thought that might deserve some consideration is that none of the field sampling locations are in the far NW nor in the SE corner. Now, your interpretations do not rely on there being stations in those locations, but when you interpret Figure 6, you do write about parts of the plateau that a reader could conceivably think includes those areas, where no control by comparison to field observations has occurred.
Thus, if at all possible, perhaps you could write a sentence or two that clarifies any issues that emanate from what I have attempted to describe here.
Author Response
Point 1: My only thought that might deserve some consideration is that none of the field sampling locations are in the far NW nor in the SE corner. Now, your interpretations do not rely on there being stations in those locations, but when you interpret Figure 6, you do write about parts of the plateau that a reader could conceivably think includes those areas, where no control by comparison to field observations has occurred. Thus, if at all possible, perhaps you could write a sentence or two that clarifies any issues that emanate from what I have attempted to describe here.
Response 1: We added an explanation of the problem in the Discussion section.
Line 518-521: As the stations are mainly distributed over the inner TP, the evaluation results based on in situ observations are only representative in these areas. Results are uncertain in other regions of the TP. It should be noted that the evaluation results of TC method and statistical metrics are not completely consistent across regions.
Reviewer 3 Report
Dear Authors,
the paper entitled "Spatiotemporal Characteristics of Soil Moisture on the Tibetan Plateau derived from Three Gridded Datasets", kindly submitted to the Remote Sensing journal, tackles the use of the Triple collocation (TC/ETC) approach to estimate the Soil Moisture distribution over vast areas without the need to carry out large-scale in situ measurements.
The idea is ambitious; however, no indications about the soil cover texture are given?
what is the distribution model of your data, both derived and measured?
I suggest adding a flowchart that summarizes all the processing steps you followed. In my opinion it would facilitate understanding of the gained results and of possible missing information such as soil type.
I suggest adding (Lines 105-107) a table with station details including equipment.
what would happen if TP is divided into zones of similar characteristics especially soil type, precipitation and sun radiation?
(as reported in Lines: 331-332.)
Fig. 5:
did authors investigate latitude and soil texture effect? (as reported in Lines: 331-332)
many paragraphs start with Figure 1 shows..... I prefer In Figure 1,....
did authors measure the temperature of the sampled soil?
I did not see any comment concerning the effect of the heat signal on the soil temperature?
Conclusions:
I did not find any comment on possible validation of the predictions? in the sense that no sites were sampled for SM to validate the discussed results? at least, I expected to see a map where proposed points for future experimental sampling and determination of SM?
The manuscript can be accepted after minor revision.
Reviewer,
Best Regards
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