Analysis of Diurnal Evolution of Cloud Properties and Convection Tracking over the South China Coastal Area
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
General comment:
The manuscript “Analysis of daily evolution of cloud properties and convection tracking over the South China coastal area” by Wang et al. analyses the optical properties of clouds in the inland and offshore regions of the South China coastal area in selected days of 2017 through a deep neural network model.
For readers who are not familiar with the geography of the SCCA, it would be useful to have a brief introduction about the orography of the investigated area, which can help interpret the interaction between MCS and sea/land breeze. Moreover, the constant references to paper C19 certainly streamline this manuscript but, on the other hand, do not make it self-sufficient and, in many parts, it is also necessary to have C19 under one's eyes to understand the concepts presented and discussed here. Furthermore, it would be advisable to report in the captions of the figures which results refer to the satellite measurements and which to the DNN model. Finally, the final session “Concluding remarks and discussion” should be extended, especially for what concerns the part of the discussion, where the results obtained are only recalled and not discussed from a physical or modelling point of view.
For the above reasons, a major revision of the manuscript is recommended.
Specific comments:
Sect 2.3: The choice of the SAST algorithm used in the paper should be discussed more in detail. From the manuscript it is not clear whether the algorithm is used as proposed by Courbot et al (2020) or has been modified for the specific application.
Sect. 3.1: It is unclear how the sea and land breeze should interact with MCS. Furthermore, the authors first state that they reproduce the diurnal rainfall patterns shown by C19 based on rainfall data collected over 20 years, and then they state that they reproduce the main pattern of diurnal rainfall using 12 days of IMERG data selected from June 2017. it is not clear and should be rewritten.
Figure 2: the caption reads “Days 190 were selected from June 2017”. Are the days used those shown in Figure 1? What are they?
Figure 3: the offshore and inland time series are obtained by averaging all the pixels of the SCCA area shown in Figure 2 that fall into the land / sea classification?
Sect 3.3: When Himawari-8 is not at the nadir point, is a correction applied to Equation1?
Author Response
Please find attached PDF file for our reply.
Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
There are no specific remarks for the work. The remarks made are in the nature of wishes. Therefore, the article can be accepted for publication with the desired addition to the text of the article of reasoning about the problem of remote measurement of precipitation and cloud classification
Comments for author File: Comments.pdf
Author Response
Please find attached PDF file for our reply.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 3 Report
Review of “Analysis of diurnal evolution of cloud properties and convection tracking over the South China coastal area” by Xinyue Wang, Hironobu Iwabuchi, and Jean-Baptiste Courbot.
The study presents different rainfall diurnal variations over the offshore and inland regions of the South China coastal area. Using the deep neural network, the cloud data was retrieved, and the cloud system's diurnal characteristics and properties are categorized with respect to the rainfall observed. The type of mesoscale convective systems and their locations were also identified during the study period.
Overall, a very well-written manuscript with some minor issues. The figures were fine and legible, although I suggest marking the SCCA region in all figures where a map is shown. In some figures, the axes are hard to see, but if the SCCA region is marked properly it should be fine. In a lot of places, a comparison with figures from external papers was made, see my suggestion in the below comments. I recommend publication after addressing the following minor comments.
Minor comments:
Comment #1: In the abstract, avoid using terms like “low”, “medium” etc. If possible, define these terms or quantify them. Abstracts are the first thing a reader looks at to decide whether to read the whole article or not.
Comment #2: Line 44: Fig 2 in the present study or Chen et al. 2019?
Comment #3: Line 91-96 need expansion. The observed diurnal features could be added to the supplement material to strengthen the author's choice of June 2017.
Comment #4: Authors referred to the figures from other papers a lot. Wherever possible, try importing that data into the present study. For example, Figure 3 in this study could have the data from Figure 1 of Chen et al. 2019 overlayed with different line styles or colors.
Comment #5: Line 278: 3<ICOT<=20.
Comment #6: Line 280: what is a medium-cloud? Do you mean medium-thick cloud?
Comment #7: Line 300: text mentions ICOT, while Figure 9 second row has COT title for subplots! Also, I wonder what the results will look like if we were to use ice cloud top height instead of optical thickness as input for the SSAT algorithm. To address this, the authors could add the ICTH plot to Figure 9 and add a sentence or two on their pattern with rainfall and ICOT patterns.
Comment #8: Line 357: Add “Medium-intensity” before “MCSs lasting between 9 and 12h….”
Comment #9: Line 362: The strongest MCSs “lasting more than 12h” (denoted by red dots)…
Comment #10: Figure 11: Why do you have MCSs identified outside the SCCA region? Remove the data outside of the SCCA region. At Line 377 it is written that no starting or ending points were observed from 00-03LST over the inland region. Looking at Figure 11 it is not true, as there exists a starting point for an MCS outside the SCCA region.
Comment #11: Figure 12: Mark SCCA region.
Comment #12: Line 402: “the wind changes from southward to northward…” does not look like it changes direction from Figure 12?
Other comments:
I couldn't find Chen et al. (2020) in the references. Maybe it is a typo. Also, there are two Chen et al. (2019) possibilities for referencing as seen from the references list, I suggest distinguishing them somehow.
Author Response
Please find attached PDF file for our reply.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Round 2
Reviewer 1 Report
The authors responded adequately to the Reviewer's requests, improving the readability of the manuscript and clarifying the unclear points. In the revised version, the paper could be considered suitable for publication.
