Profiling Dust Mass Concentration in Northwest China Using a Joint Lidar and Sun-Photometer Setting

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Please, you can find attached the reviewer comments.

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Reviewer 2 Report

Overview and General Impression

The described in the manuscript (MS) study is dedicated on the profiling dust mass concentration in Northwest China using a simultaneous measurements with joint lidar and sun-photometer equipment from a four field experiments and one permanent station. The indirect determination of various particulate matter (PM) parameters is important issue due to the crucial relevance of the atmospheric aerosol in many aspects, as concise but clearly motivated from the authors.

The subject of the MS relevant and well argued from the authors.

As main strength of the work I would outline the general concept: the classic (i.e. with already proven consistency and effectiveness from other authors/in other experiments around the world) lidar-photometer method is applied over the whole amount of available data. Generally, I am deeply impressed from the profound knowledge of the authors in this area and from the in-depth performed investigation. I have not detected during my review any principal flaws or main caveats that makes the MS not publishable or requires major revision and thus I have not included ‘Major Remarks’ section in this review.

I have, however, some concerns and proposals from which, according my opinion, the MS could benefit.

Minor remarks

- r209-210: It is not clarified what the overbar means. I guess traditional (average) notation, but this have to be stated explicitly.

- r243: Nothing is noted about the reanalysis ERA-Interim. The producer (ECMWF) as well as reference should be included:

Dee, D.P., Uppala, S.M., Simmons, A.J., Berrisford, P., Poli, P., Kobayashi, S., Andrae, U., Balmaseda, M.A., Balsamo, G., Bauer, P., Bechtold, P., Beljaars, A.C.M., van de Berg, L., Bidlot, J., Bormann, N., Delsol, C., Dragani, R., Fuentes, M., Geer, A.J., Haimberger, L., Healy, S.B., Hersbach, H., Hólm, E. V., Isaksen, L., Kållberg, P., Köhler, M., Matricardi, M., McNally, A.P., Monge-Sanz, B. M., Morcrette, J.-J., Park, B.-K., Peubey, C., de Rosnay, P., Tavolato, C., Thépaut, J.-N. and Vitart, F., 2011: The ERA-Interim reanalysis: configuration and performance of the data assimilation system. Quart. J. Roy. Meteorol. Soc. 137, 553–597. https://doi.org/10.1002/qj.828

An inclusion of the ERA-Interim/ECMWF in the acknowledgment is also desirable.

- Some of the used font sizes of Figures3-4 and especially 7-8 appears too big.

- It is clear that the permanent site (SACOL) produces up to an order bigger amount of data than the temporary ones. A concise comment of the robustness of the results from the other four sites from statistical point of view would be good idea.

- In all sites are probably performed also (i.e. beside the lidar-photometer estimations) also direct estimations (PDF? DMC?) of the dust samples at least in the surface layer, right? Is it principally possible (although beyond the scope of the current MS) to utilize this data in order to reduce the uncertainty? A brief comment in this direction could be desirable.

Conclusion/Decision

Accept after (very) minor corrections

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 3 Report

I have not read the text in detail as I was informed that there was already a sufficient number of reports available. I have skimmed the text, though, and I found that the authors could increase readability a lot by reducing the amount of acronyms/abbreviations used in the text. It would also be good to get some information about the amount of data included in this work. Finally, the authors should make a better effort in acknowledging the work of Ansmann et al. (2012,2019) and Mamouri and Ansmann (2014,2017), who developed the method they are using and that this is called the polarization lidar photometer networking (POLIPHON) method.

Here are the links to the cites papers: https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-12-9399-2012 <https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-12-9399-2012> https://doi.org/10.5194/amt-7-3717-2014 <https://doi.org/10.5194/amt-7-3717-2014> https://doi.org/10.5194/amt-10-3403-2017 <https://doi.org/10.5194/amt-10-3403-2017> https://doi.org/10.5194/amt-12-4849-2019

Author Response

Response: We greatly appreciate your constructive suggestions. According to your suggestions, we have reduced the number of acronyms/abbreviations used in the revised manuscript, especially for infrequent ones, so as to increase the readability of our paper. About the amount of data included in this work, such as observation samples at each site for DD, PD-I, and PD-II conditions, we have made the statistics and listed them in the last column of Table 2, which is exactly valuable to readers. About the lidar-photometer method (POLIPHON), developed and improved by Ansmann et al. (2012,2019) and Mamouri and Ansmann (2014,2017), exactly have been giving us the greatest help in discussing the uncertainties of dust mass concentration estimation for satellite-based remote sensing. All the four papers and others were cited in this revised manuscript. Meanwhile, we also express our special thanks to the great thoughts of POLIPHON method, developed by Prof. Ansmann and his teams, in the acknowledgment. Thanks again for your good suggestions.