A Study of a Severe Spring Dust Event in 2021 over East Asia with WRF-Chem and Multiple Platforms of Observations
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
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Comments for author File: 
Comments.pdf
Author Response
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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
The authors clearly analyzed the emissions and transport of dust particles during the severe dust storm in March 2021. Unfortunately, after reading the manuscript, I didn’t find the work is of significant scientific meaning. I suggest the authors to further highlight their main contributions and the significance of this analysis.
1. On behalf of the potential readers of this manuscript, I would be interested to know the causes of such extreme event. In L212, the authors wrote “high wind speed is one of the important meteorological factors resulting in the dust emissions” but without further quantitative analysis or explanation. Is there any threshold of wind speed to induce such severe dust-storm? It would also be interesting to check the effects from other possible driving factors.
2. L66, how did you define such region that most significantly affected by this dust event?
3. L171, please let us know where are the Gobi, Kumtag, Qaidam and Taklimakan deserts?
4. L174-175, I am afraid I fail to get the meaning of this sentence.
5. Please explain what is “bin” in Table 2.
6. L258-261, I cannot tell such conclusion from Figure 4.
7. Why there is large missing data in Himawari-8 AOD as shown in Figure 7? This should be added the manuscript.
8. Further explanation on Figure 8 is needed, I don’t understand what the subfigures b, c, d, f, g, h are showing.
9. The discussion section should be largely modified. Surprised to see a Discussion section with no references included. There is lack of a comparison with pervious results and discussion of the possible driving mechanism of such dust storm event.
Author Response
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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 3 Report
General Comments
Overall, the paper is well written and provides an overview of the dust events as well as comparisons between model outputs and surface and satellite observations related to the event. The results presented are mainly qualitative, however. These could be supplemented by more quantitative results (spatial correlations, biases, root mean square error, etc.). In addition to or instead of the side-by-side comparisons presented in most figures, plots of differences might be more useful to highlight the disagreements between the model and observations.
Furthermore, one of the key conclusions is that the WRF model overestimated wind speeds, contributing to over-estimation of dust. However, this is only in comparison to another model (albeit a reanalysis model). Can this be further verified through comparisons with other data sources about wind speed, for example, meteorological station observations? Especially considering the “nudging” of the WRF outputs towards ERA5, an independent data source is needed.
Specific Comments
Lines 18-20: It should be specified if these are percentages of total mass or some other quantity.
Line 94: “Model” is missing after “(WRF)”.
Line 100: “of simulated are served” should be “of the simulation serve”.
Lines 101-107: Provide references for ERA5, MEIC and MIX-Asia. Also, provide some details or a reference for how the “nudge” is performed.
Line 132: remove repeated word “stations”.
Lines 159-160: The meaning of this sentence is unclear. Does this mean that data between the surface and 4 kilometers altitude is used in this study?
Lines 220-222: Is it possible to quantify the overestimate? Were any studies conducted to determine what effect the “nudging” has (i.e., without nudging, would the overestimation have been worse?)
Figures 3-5: I suggest providing some more quantitative information regarding these results, for example, computing the spatial correlation between the observed and modeled concentrations.
Author Response
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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
