Climatological characteristics of raindrop size distributions in Busan,  Republic of Korea

Suh, S.-H.; You, C.-H.; Lee, D.-I.

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-20-193-2016

Articles | Volume 20, issue 1

https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-20-193-2016

© Author(s) 2016. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-20-193-2016

© Author(s) 2016. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.

Articles | Volume 20, issue 1

Research article

|

18 Jan 2016

Research article |

| 18 Jan 2016

Climatological characteristics of raindrop size distributions in Busan, Republic of Korea

S.-H. Suh, C.-H. You, and D.-I. Lee

Download

Final revised paper (published on 18 Jan 2016)
Preprint (discussion started on 20 Apr 2015)

Interactive discussion

Status: closed

AC: Author comment | RC: Referee comment | SC: Short comment | EC: Editor comment

- Printer-friendly version

- Supplement

RC C1437: 'Review of "Climatological Characteristics of Raindrop Size Distributions within a Topographically Complex Area" by Suh et al.', Anonymous Referee #1, 12 May 2015
- AC C2062: 'Climatological Characteristics of Raindrop Size Distributions within a Topographically Complex Area', Sung-Ho Suh, 14 Jun 2015
RC C2203: 'Review "Climatological characteristics of raindrop size distributions within a topographically complex area" by Suh et al.', Anonymous Referee #2, 23 Jun 2015
- AC C2462: 'Answer of Review #2 by S.-H. Suh et al.', Sung-Ho Suh, 09 Jul 2015
RC C2361: 'Review of HESS-2015-101', Anonymous Referee #3, 03 Jul 2015
- AC C2450: 'Answer of Review #3 by S.-H. Suh et al.', Sung-Ho Suh, 09 Jul 2015
- AC C2500: 'AC C2450: 'Answer of Review #3 by S.-H. Suh et al.'', Sung-Ho Suh, 11 Jul 2015
AC C2442: 'Answer of Review #2 by S.-H. Suh et al.', Sung-Ho Suh, 09 Jul 2015
RC C2541: 'Referee comment', Anonymous Referee #4, 13 Jul 2015
- AC C2574: ''Answer of Review #4 by S-. H. Suh et al.'', Sung-Ho Suh, 13 Jul 2015

Peer-review completion

AR: Author's response | RR: Referee report | ED: Editor decision

ED: Reconsider after major revisions (14 Jul 2015) by Matjaz Mikos

AR by Sung-Ho Suh on behalf of the Authors (06 Aug 2015) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Referee Nomination & Report Request started (07 Aug 2015) by Matjaz Mikos

RR by Anonymous Referee #1 (24 Aug 2015)

Suggestions for revision or reasons for rejection

The authors have given satisfactory answers and corrections to most of my specific comments. However, there are several comments where my remarks were partially neglected or misunderstood; I have listed these below along with my comments. Moreover, the authors have given no reply whatsoever to my general comments. Both of these issues need to be addressed for the paper to be publishable.

How were snow events detected? How about hail or graupel?
Author’s answer : Thank you for reviewer's comment. The present study is focused on liquid raindrops. Therefore, we did not consider the snow, hail and graupel.

My point with this question was: how did you identify events with snow, hail or graupel, so that they were not included in the rain statistics? This is important precisely because this is a liquid raindrop study.

Lines 14-16: The sentence after (ii) is unclear. I don’t understand what "DSD spectra was smaller than five consecutive channels" means.
Author’s answer : I’m so sorry to make you confused. It means that the raindrop should be recorded at more than five channels for one minute (e.g., DSD spectra observed at 1st 2nd, 3rd, 4th and 5th (consecutive) channel of POSS is used, but those of 1st, 2nd, 4th, 5th and 6th (not consecutive) is removed as noise.

The explanation in the comment makes sense, however point (ii) is still unclear in the revised manuscript. I suggest rewording it as follows: "ii) DSD spectra in which drops were not found in at least five consecutive channels were removed as non-atmospheric."

Line 19: How common were cases with R > 200 mm/h?
Author’s answer : I’m really so sorry, I do not understand this question exactly. For my understanding, when rain rate (R) exceed 200 mm h-1, disdrometer has a tendency to reduce of detection capacity of small raindrops. Therefore, we removed the samples in case of R > 200 mm h-1 to eliminate the noisy data.

My point was: how often did you get DSD spectra with R > 200 mm/h? I asked this because heavy rainfall cases contribute a significant fraction of the total rainfall, and so ignoring them might lead to some statistical bias.

Line 21: The threshold below which the DSD is overestimated depends on the disdrometer. Leinonen et al. (2012) used a different type of disdrometer.
Author’s answer : Thank you for reviewer's opinion. I agree to reviewer's idea. As far as I know, th e tendency of overestimating DSD in D0 < 0.5 mm would be caused by characteristics of disdrometer type. However, it is also by intrinsic feature and threshold of gamma DSD model (Bringi et al., 2003; Leinonen et al., 2012). Therefore, I think it is possible to use this threshold in the present study.

I cannot find an indication that this is an intrinsic feature of the Gamma DSD in either the Leinonen or Bringi papers. Considering that the Gamma DSD is used all the way down to cloud droplet sizes (on the order of 0.01 mm, see e.g. Miles et al. (2000), J. Atmos. Sci., 57, 295–311.), I find this a dubious statement.

Line 3: What T-matrix implementation was used? Eq (11): This equation holds for the Rayleigh scattering regime; since you have omitted the radar wavelength, I cannot evaluate if it is applicable to reviewer's calculations.
Author’s answer : I’m so sorry, I missed that. The radar frequency in the T-matrix simulation is considered as S-band (2.85 GHz). I added the specification of this in the present study ’Also, the condition of frequency for electromagnetic wave of radar is 2.85 GHz (S-band).’

The question about which T-matrix implementation was used in this study has not been answered.

Hide

RR by Anonymous Referee #4 (09 Sep 2015)

Suggestions for revision or reasons for rejection

The paper was improved even if I regret that it contains too many descriptions of the figures but not enough associated physical interpretations. New elements that the authors have been added (the POSS description in particular) are sometime a bit confusing. Moreover, I have found some other mistakes in the manuscript. I am sorry that a part of my new comments was not in my first review but I think it is important to take them into account. The last figures have been also modified and I think that some errors have appeared… I’m afraid that this paper is not totally ready for publication.

• Page 8, line 145: I am surprised by the value of water density assumed by the authors. I think that 1 g m-3 should be changed into 10^6 g m-3, isn’t it?
• Page 8, line 150: “Unis” should be changed into “Unit”.
• Page 8, line 150-151: This factor just corresponds to the conversion of length units into mm and time units into hours.
• Page 8, line 161, last sentence: “Using DSD estimate” is confusing because it mixes the principle of the POSS radar for DSD estimation (I understood that POSS radar estimate DSD from Doppler spectra) and the POSS calibration technique. Indeed Johnson and Hamilton (2008) explained in their section 4 that N(D) was estimated by inverting their equation (2) (corresponding to your equation (11)) using predetermined weighting functions. They explained also in their section 3 that “The “forward” equation (2) could also be used to calculate S(f) for hypothetical N(D)”.
• Same part: X (in V(X)) is not defined.
• Page 9, line 170 : I propose to change « A Doppler » by « The Doppler »
• Page 9, line 185, I don’t understand the meaning of the sentence: “Number of DSD was smaller than …” It means that the authors compare between the number of spectra with a number of channels (I understood that it corresponded to velocity or diameter classes) ? What do you think about this proposition: “Non-atmospheric data were removed from the analysis if the DSD spectrum was concentrated in less than ﬁve consecutive channels,…”
• Figure 3: PSN C-band radar is plotted but it is not used and not described in the text. I propose to delete it.
• Page 12, line 236-237: The authors introduced classification methods for rainfall type via the analysis of 3 microphysical characteristics. For the first one, they mentioned a N0-R relationship. But they did not explain how N0 or/and R is/are used to classify as stratiform or convective rain.
• Page 12, line 240: R<0.5 mm h-1 during 5 minutes is equivalent to 0.04 mm during 5 minutes. I thought it was very low threshold for convective rainfall! So, I checked in Johnson and Hamilton (1988) and I found that they mentioned that the threshold is 0.5 mm per 5 min (that corresponds to 6 mm h-1). The sentence should be therefore modified in the manuscript. Hopefully, the classification method proposed by Bringi et al. (2003) is applied in the present study.
• Page 14, line 279: I think that “0<µ>5” should be replaced by “0<µ<5”
• Figure 4, a bracket is missing in the caption just after “ solid blue line”
• Page 20, line 417: the double bracket should be transformed into a simple one
• Section 3.1. and 3.3.1.: I regret that there is too much figures description and not enough associated physical interpretations.
• Figure 12 and 13: I think that “NT” and “DT” should be replaced by “Winter” and “Summer” in the legends as well as in the captions. I am confused also because your previous figure 14(b) in the first version of the manuscript is the same as the figure 12(c) in the new version of the manuscript whereas the captions are different.
• The reference to Waldvogel (1974) seems to be not used and should be removed of the references list.

Referee Report: PDF

Hide

RR by Anonymous Referee #2 (05 Oct 2015)

Suggestions for revision or reasons for rejection

Overall quality:
The resubmitted version of the manuscript by Suh et al. entitled “Climatological Characteristics of Raindrop Size Distributions in Busan, Korea” has definitely improved in quality as compared to the previous submission. There are still a number of small issues that have to be accounted for before this work can be accepted for publication (see comments below). Furthermore, I would suggest the authors to have the manuscript edited by a native English speaker, as quite a number of sentences are either spelled wrong or difficult to follow.

Major concerns:
Page 5 lines 108-109: “Furthermore, … rain rates.” I do not understand this sentence as I have the feeling that this statement also holds for a non-normalized DSD.. Please rephrase.

Page 17 lines 347-350: This sentence is very unclear. But since the authors refer to a figure which is not presented in the manuscript, I would suggest to remove these lines from the text.

Figure 6: Change the legend symbols of “Daytime” and “Nighttime” in the bottom panel into a “+” sign instead of using the “o” symbol.

Page 17 lines 354-355: “The scatter … maritime cluster”. I do not agree with this statement. The 1-minute data is all over the place, corresponding to both continental and maritime precipitation.

Page 17 line 360 equation 16: This fitted equation is heavily influence by the typhoon outlier. In case this point is not taken into account in Fig. 6B, I expect a completely different result for the fitted line. Therefore, I would suggest that the authors add some more details on the limitations of this fitting procedure on page 17.

Page 21 line 453: Please rephrase “It is .. with R.”

Page 23 lines 453-454: Please rephrase “Bringi et al. … D_m and N_w”

Page 24 lines 509-510: Please rephrase “except for heavy ... the Typhoon category.

Page 24 lines 515-521: This information is too specific for a summary and conclusions as these results can be found in the results section of the manuscript. Please try to summarize this part, without being too specific.

Minor concerns:
Page 2 line 28: Change “cover” into “convering” and add “also” after “, but”
Page 2 line 29: Change “value” into “values”
Page 9 line 176-177: Change “does not consider because of beyond the research.” into “was not considered because it lies beyond this work.”
Page 15 line 305: Change “infer” into “inferred”
Page 15 line 314: Change “distribute” into “distributed”
Page 18 line 375: Change “higher in the” into “more ofter observed during”
Page 23 line 499: Change “error” into “errors”
Page 24 line 514: Change “display” into “displays”
Page 24 line 523: Change “is correspond” into “corresponds”
Page 25 line 524-525: Remove “based on … wind direction.”

References:

Hide

ED: Reconsider after major revisions (05 Oct 2015) by Matjaz Mikos

AR by Sung-Ho Suh on behalf of the Authors (17 Oct 2015)

ED: Referee Nomination & Report Request started (22 Oct 2015) by Matjaz Mikos

RR by Anonymous Referee #1 (05 Nov 2015)

RR by Anonymous Referee #4 (29 Nov 2015)

ED: Publish subject to minor revisions (Editor review) (29 Nov 2015) by Matjaz Mikos

AR by Sung-Ho Suh on behalf of the Authors (08 Dec 2015) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Publish subject to technical corrections (20 Dec 2015) by Matjaz Mikos

AR by Sung-Ho Suh on behalf of the Authors (22 Dec 2015) Author's response Manuscript

Short summary

This paper was written to find the climatological characteristics of raindrop size distribution (DSD) with respect to the wind direction in Busan, Korea. The data were collected by POSS disdrometer during 4 years (2001–2004). Busan shows the tendency of land-sea breeze. When sea wind blows during rainfall period, mean size and number concentration of raindrop are smaller and larger than that of land wind blows, respectively. It means that the features of DSD depend on the wind direction.