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  • David Moyer1,*,
  • Jeff McIntire2 and
  • Xiaoxiong Xiong3

Reviewer 1: Anonymous Reviewer 2: Wenhui Wang Reviewer 3: Banghua Yan Reviewer 4: Anonymous Reviewer 5: Anonymous

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Very well written manuscript covering measurement methodology and results as well as uncertainty analysis. Only minor edits are suggested:

Satellite name typos: should be JPSS-2 (lines 12, 193)

Add: (NOAA-20, designated JPSS-1 prior to launch) (line 36)

FPA acronym needs to be defined (line 48)

Author Response

Thank you for your review. I have made the suggested modifications.

 

Satellite name typos: should be JPSS-2 (lines 12, 193)

Fixed those typos

Add: (NOAA-20, designated JPSS-1 prior to launch) (line 36)

Added text to identify JPSS-1

FPA acronym needs to be defined (line 48)

Fixed

Reviewer 2 Report

This paper presents the methodology for characterizing J2 VIIRS polarization sensitivity, and compares J2 polarization sensitivity with those for S-NPP and NOAA-20 VIIRS.  J2 will be launched in late 2022 and this study is valuable for VIIRS SDR science teams and data users. The manuscript is well-written. Suggest accepting it for publication after minor revision. 

1. Line 46, change “Seven bands” to “Nine bands”.

2. Lines 285-287: please explain more about the two sentences in these lines. (1) Why there is an inversion of the s and p polarization reflectance for the VIIRS mirrors near the spectral region of band M4? Does it also occur to S-NPP and NOAA-20? (2) How to properly orient the s and p polarization during on-orbit polarization correction? 

 

Author Response

Thank you for your review. I've added responses to your review comments below.

  1. Line 46, change “Seven bands” to “Nine bands”.

Done

  1. Lines 285-287: please explain more about the two sentences in these lines. (1) Why there is an inversion of the s and p polarization reflectance for the VIIRS mirrors near the spectral region of band M4? Does it also occur to S-NPP and NOAA-20? (2) How to properly orient the s and p polarization during on-orbit polarization correction? 

Added a2 and b2 coordinate frame to the polar plots. The s and p polarization orientation can be determined from the polar plots with a2 and b2 and the coordinates in figure 3 that links the VIIRS scan and track directions to the sheet orientation.

Added some new text to describe the mirror s and p inversion and make it clearer.

Reviewer 3 Report

See attached file

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Thank you for your thorough review of this paper. My response to your review comments are below.

1) Title is suggested to be revised to ‘Polarization Sensitivity Assessment of Pre-launch JPSS-2 VIIRS NVIR Bands’ or a similar title.

Changed the title based on your suggestion


2) Update the abstract to a concise version by focusing on the VIIRS debriefing, JPSS polarization sensitivity measurement methodology, and conclusion of the VIIRS NVIR bands about polarization sensitivity analysis.

Changed the abstract to be organized based on your suggestions above.


3) Suggest adding a VIIRS optical design diagram or sketch to support the descriptions in the 2nd and 3rd paragraphs in page 2. The current contents in those two paragraphs contain many details of the VIIRS optical design. It would be hard to understand the principle of the optical structure without a proper sketch about VIIRS optical structure (high level).

Added a figure to show the basic optical design of VIIRS

 


4) The authors used some acronyms before providing their full descriptions, e.g., ‘FPA’ in line 48 of page 2.

Added a definition to FPA


5) Add a space after ‘PST’ in line 153 of page 4

Done


6) The first item in bracelet in (1) in page 4,??.??.,Σ????????,???????????? should be an average instead of the sum, according to the description in the first paragraph. Please correct. In addition, please use a similar expression to the mean dark digital number to have a full description even without reading the contents in the first paragraph.

Removed the inner summation and made them mean values


7) If I understand correctly, (3) in page 4 is actually a polarization amplitude normalized by the factors in the numerator in (1). Fcross in (5) is also a parameter normalized by a0_cross. I am a little lost in definitions of (3) and (5). Can you clarify those confusions? In addition, add this explanation to the manuscript.

Added more description to the paragraphs around these equations.

 


8) Add a short paragraph just under Section 3.2 in page 5 to connect each of four subsections. Particularly, provide some explanations why the analyses in 3.1 and 3.2 should be done first before the analysis in 3.3. The results in 3.1 and 3.2 seem demonstrating the impacts of the straylight contamination and cross-polarization are very small and will be considered in the uncertainty.

Added a paragraph as the beginning of Section 3 to describe how the 4 subsections fit together.


9) Re-arrange all figures and tables. One way is to present them in the last part of the manuscript or insert the table or figure to its correct location.
Done

 

Reviewer 4 Report

The paper discusses the methodology of polarization sensitivity measurements and compares the JPSS-2 VIIRS pre-launch polarization characterization with S-NPP and NOAA-20 29 VIIRS builds. The results obtained are new, interesting, and valuable for the field. The paper is mostly written well, but the structure of the article should be reorganized to be in accordance with the journal requirements. The results are clear, but their discussion should be presented in the section Discussion. To be published in the journal, the paper should be significantly improved in accordance with the suggested corrections. So, the paper needs major revision; otherwise, it should be rejected.

 

Corrections suggested.

 

1. The paper should have the following structure (see the journal template): Introduction, Materials and Methods, Results, Discussion, and Conclusions. Please, reorganize your paper in accordance with the required structure: https://www.mdpi.com/journal/remotesensing/instructions.

2. Please, indicate a corresponding author and provide its e-mail address.

3. Please, highlight main results obtained and their importance in Abstract. When improving the abstract, use the following recommendations from the journal template:

“Abstract: A single paragraph of about 200 words maximum. For research articles, abstracts should give a pertinent overview of the work. We strongly encourage authors to use the following style of structured abstracts, but without headings: (1) Background: Place the question addressed in a broad context and highlight the purpose of the study; (2) Methods: briefly describe the main methods or treatments applied; (3) Results: summarize the article’s main findings; (4) Conclusions: indicate the main conclusions or interpretations. The abstract should be an objective representation of the article and it must not contain results that are not presented and substantiated in the main text and should not exaggerate the main conclusions.”.

4. Please, improve section Introduction in accordance with the journal recommendations, and provide appropriate references:

“1. Introduction

The introduction should briefly place the study in a broad context and highlight why it is important. It should define the purpose of the work and its significance. The current state of the research field should be carefully reviewed and key publications cited. Please highlight controversial and diverging hypotheses when necessary. Finally, briefly mention the main aim of the work and highlight the principal conclusions. As far as possible, please keep the introduction comprehensible to scientists outside your particular field of research. References should be numbered in order of appearance and indicated by a numeral or numerals in square brackets—e.g., [1] or [2,3], or [4–6].”.

5. Please, refer to equations, tables, and figures, like i.e., Equation (2), Table 2, Figure 2 (see the journal template).

6. Please, extend section Conclusions, provide description of possible application of the obtained results and the future research plans.

7. Please, rewrite Author Contributions in accordance with the journal requirements:

“Author Contributions: For research articles with several authors, a short paragraph specifying their individual contributions must be provided. The following statements should be used “Conceptualization, X.X. and Y.Y.; methodology, X.X.; software, X.X.; validation, X.X., Y.Y. and Z.Z.; formal analysis, X.X.; investigation, X.X.; resources, X.X.; data curation, X.X.; writing—original draft preparation, X.X.; writing—review and editing, X.X.; visualization, X.X.; supervision, X.X.; project administration, X.X.; funding acquisition, Y.Y. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.” Please turn to the CRediT taxonomy for the term explanation. Authorship must be limited to those who have contributed substantially to the work reported.”.

8. Please, provide a missing paragraph:

“Conflicts of Interest: Declare conflicts of interest or state “The authors declare no conflict of interest.” Authors must identify and declare any personal circumstances or interest that may be perceived as inappropriately influencing the representation or interpretation of reported research results. Any role of the funders in the design of the study; in the collection, analyses or interpretation of data; in the writing of the manuscript; or in the decision to publish the results must be declared in this section. If there is no role, please state “The funders had no role in the design of the study; in the collection, analyses, or interpretation of data; in the writing of the manuscript; or in the decision to publish the results”.

 

9. Please, prepare all the references exactly with the journal requirements. Use the journal template and latest published papers as examples.

Author Response

Thank you for your thorough review of this paper. My response to your review comments are below.

  1. The paper should have the following structure (see the journal template): Introduction, Materials and Methods, Results, Discussion, and Conclusions. Please, reorganize your paper in accordance with the required structure: https://www.mdpi.com/journal/remotesensing/instructions.

  2. Please, indicate a corresponding author and provide its e-mail address.

Done


  1. Please, highlight main results obtained and their importance in Abstract. When improving the abstract, use the following recommendations from the journal template:
    “Abstract: A single paragraph of about 200 words maximum. For research articles, abstracts should give a pertinent overview of the work. We strongly encourage authors to use the following style of structured abstracts, but without headings: (1) Background: Place the question addressed in a broad context and highlight the purpose of the study; (2) Methods: briefly describe the main methods or treatments applied; (3) Results: summarize the article’s main findings; (4) Conclusions: indicate the main conclusions or interpretations. The abstract should be an objective representation of the article and it must not contain results that are not presented and substantiated in the main text and should not exaggerate the main conclusions.”.

Rewrote the abstract to meet the journal template


  1. Please, improve section Introduction in accordance with the journal recommendations, and provide appropriate references:
    “1. Introduction
    The introduction should briefly place the study in a broad context and highlight why it is important. It should define the purpose of the work and its significance. The current state of the research field should be carefully reviewed and key publications cited. Please highlight controversial and diverging hypotheses when necessary. Finally, briefly mention the main aim of the work and highlight the principal conclusions. As far as possible, please keep the introduction comprehensible to scientists outside your particular field of research. References should be numbered in order of appearance and indicated by a numeral or numerals in square brackets—e.g., [1] or [2,3], or [4–6].”.

Done, I split the introduction into two sections and added an overview as requested.


  1. Please, refer to equations, tables, and figures, like i.e., Equation (2), Table 2, Figure 2 (see the journal template).

Done


  1. Please, extend section Conclusions, provide description of possible application of the obtained results and the future research plans.

Added a discussion section to give more information about the polarization.


  1. Please, rewrite Author Contributions in accordance with the journal requirements:
    “Author Contributions: For research articles with several authors, a short paragraph specifying their individual contributions must be provided. The following statements should be used “Conceptualization, X.X. and Y.Y.; methodology, X.X.; software, X.X.; validation, X.X., Y.Y. and Z.Z.; formal analysis, X.X.; investigation, X.X.; resources, X.X.; data curation, X.X.; writing—original draft preparation, X.X.; writing—review and editing, X.X.; visualization, X.X.; supervision, X.X.; project administration, X.X.; funding acquisition, Y.Y. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.” Please turn to the CRediT taxonomy for the term explanation. Authorship must be limited to those who have contributed substantially to the work reported.”.

Done


  1. Please, provide a missing paragraph:
    “Conflicts of Interest: Declare conflicts of interest or state “The authors declare no conflict of interest.” Authors must identify and declare any personal circumstances or interest that may be perceived as inappropriately influencing the representation or interpretation of reported research results. Any role of the funders in the design of the study; in the collection, analyses or interpretation of data; in the writing of the manuscript; or in the decision to publish the results must be declared in this section. If there is no role, please state “The funders had no role in the design of the study; in the collection, analyses, or interpretation of data; in the writing of the manuscript; or in the decision to publish the results”.

Done


  1. Please, prepare all the references exactly with the journal requirements. Use the journal template and latest published papers as examples.

Done
 

Reviewer 5 Report

First of all, the article is well written.

However, we noted a few smaller issues with this paper:

1) Strangely enough, this paper is either too late or too early. Too late because the measurements were done in July 2016. Why only report these now? Too early because the JPSS-2 is due for launch on 1 November 2022. The authors may want to clarify why they publish this particular paper only now. Or does it have to do with the special issue?...

2) In a few sentences the verb may have to change from singular to plural. Please check these lines:
line 76: "The last unique optical component that contributes to the VIIRS polarization is the bandpass filters."
line 85: "The dielectric layers on 84 the dichroic is the driver for most of the polarization sensitivity..."

3) dn and dns are abbreviations and should be used in capitals: digital number (DN) and digital numbers (DNS or DNs) e.g. line 156, 158, and so on.

4) In the figures and the tables it would be useful to state the units of the numbers, because it is not always clear to me which are factors and which are percentages.

5) Not all references have DOIs, this must be corrected. For instance [1] has DOI: https://doi.org/10.1109/IGARSS.2001.976733

6) The used list of references looks reasonable to me, although some of the references are more than 20 years old. But that, of course, has to do with the long heritage of these platforms and sensors.

7) line 167 / eq (2) and further: the use of subscripts on a0, a2 and b2 is confusing. Check all the subscripts, because of inconsistent use in the article.

8) Further:

line 12: "JPSS-1"? You mean JPSS-2 right? Because JPSS-1 is NOAA-20...

line 89: remove period: "...M1-M11 [7]. radiance and reflectance products..."

line 153: add space: "...(PST)was...)"

line 83: you argue that "Overall, the major contributor to the detector-dependence of the system-level 83 polarization sensitivity is the dichroic one and the bandpass filter"
However the argumentation for dichroic 1 being the problem is only weakly supported by the paper. It specifically refers to references 5 and 6.

line 175: why is the abbreviation for the polarization amplitude called PF? This may lead to confusion with the reader because sometimes PF is used and sometimes Amplitude, like in the figures and the tables.

line 340: why do you use root sum square (RSS) and not root mean square (RMS)?

Author Response

Thank you for the thorough review. My responses to your review comments are below.

Strangely enough, this paper is either too late or too early. Too late because the measurements were done in July 2016. Why only report these now? Too early because the JPSS-2 is due for launch on 1 November 2022. The authors may want to clarify why they publish this particular paper only now. Or does it have to do with the special issue?...

Yes, the paper was written last year, but has been put on hold for this special issue. The pre-launch measurements took time to process and compare within the analysis community.

2) In a few sentences the verb may have to change from singular to plural. Please check these lines:
line 76: "The last unique optical component that contributes to the VIIRS polarization is the bandpass filters."
line 85: "The dielectric layers on 84 the dichroic is the driver for most of the polarization sensitivity..."

Changed the “is the bandpass filters” to “are the band bandpass filters”

3) dn and dns are abbreviations and should be used in capitals: digital number (DN) and digital numbers (DNS or DNs) e.g. line 156, 158, and so on.

Added language to the text to differentiate dn from DN.

4) In the figures and the tables it would be useful to state the units of the numbers, because it is not always clear to me which are factors and which are percentages.

Added wording to tables 4-6 to state they are in percentage.

5) Not all references have DOIs, this must be corrected. For instance [1] has DOI: https://doi.org/10.1109/IGARSS.2001.976733

Done

6) The used list of references looks reasonable to me, although some of the references are more than 20 years old. But that, of course, has to do with the long heritage of these platforms and sensors.

Agreed. Some of the descriptive papers for this program were written a while ago.

7) line 167 / eq (2) and further: the use of subscripts on a0, a2 and b2 is confusing. Check all the subscripts, because of inconsistent use in the article.

Thank you, I’ve checked them as requested.

8) Further:

line 12: "JPSS-1"? You mean JPSS-2 right? Because JPSS-1 is NOAA-20...

Fixed

line 89: remove period: "...M1-M11 [7]. radiance and reflectance products..."

This text has been changed and is no longer there.

line 153: add space: "...(PST)was...)"

Done

line 83: you argue that "Overall, the major contributor to the detector-dependence of the system-level 83 polarization sensitivity is the dichroic one and the bandpass filter"
However the argumentation for dichroic 1 being the problem is only weakly supported by the paper. It specifically refers to references 5 and 6.

There are no references I can point to for a more detailed explanation. The contract did a root cause investigation but did not publish their findings.

line 175: why is the abbreviation for the polarization amplitude called PF? This may lead to confusion with the reader because sometimes PF is used and sometimes Amplitude, like in the figures and the tables.

Changed PF to PA to remove that confusion.

line 340: why do you use root sum square (RSS) and not root mean square (RMS)?

The RSS is used to combine all the random errors from each uncertainty term. Each component of the uncertainty tree are considered uncorrelated and therefore would not compensate for each other and therefore RSSed instead of RMSed.

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

All of my previous comments have been addressed. 

Reviewer 4 Report

The revised version of the paper looks better than the previous one. Authors made some improvements in the paper and corrections. Nevertheless, the paper still needs some corrections before its publication.

 

Corrections suggested.

 

1. Authors have added the section Discussion but section Materials and Methods is still missing in the article. In accordance with the journal template, the article should have the following structure: Introduction, Materials and Methods, Results, Discussion, and Conclusions. Please, reorganize your paper in accordance with the required structure: https://www.mdpi.com/journal/remotesensing/instructions.

2. Move equation number to the right side of the page.

3. Lines 138 and 232. Remove a period (full stop) before section number.

4. Figure 12 caption. Please, remove redundant ‘12’ after ‘Figure 12’.

5. Section Conclusions still not corrected in accordance with the previous suggestions. Please, extend section Conclusions, provide description of possible application of the obtained results and the future research plans.

 

 

So, the paper needs minor revision.

Author Response

Thank you for the second review comments. My responses to them are below.

Authors have added the section Discussion but section Materials and Methods is still missing in the article. In accordance with the journal template, the article should have the following structure: Introduction, Materials and Methods, Results, Discussion, and Conclusions. Please, reorganize your paper in accordance with the required structure: https://www.mdpi.com/journal/remotesensing/instructions.

Done

  1. Move equation number to the right side of the page.

 

Done

  1. Lines 138 and 232. Remove a period (full stop) before section number.

Done. Not sure how those got there.

  1. Figure 12 caption. Please, remove redundant ‘12’ after ‘Figure 12’.

Done. Nice catch on the copy paste error.

  1. Section Conclusions still not corrected in accordance with the previous suggestions. Please, extend section Conclusions, provide description of possible application of the obtained results and the future research plans.

 Added some text about on-orbit and future work

Round 3

Reviewer 4 Report

Now, the revised version of the paper looks much better than the previous versions. Authors have made the necessary improvements and corrections to the paper. The paper can be punished in its current form. I only advise to substitute section 4 name ‘JPSS-2 VIIRS polarization sensitivity results’ for ‘Results’ in accordance with the instructions in the journal template.

 

 

So, the paper can be accepted in its present form.