Evaluation and Applicability Analysis of GPM Satellite Precipitation over Mainland China
, Sirong Chen 6,*, Nergui Nanding 7, Zhijun Huang 1,2,3, Weitian Chen 1,2,3, Chaoqun Li 1,2,3 and Xiaomeng Li 1,2,3
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
There are many problems should be addressed, especially the novelty of this work.
1. Introduction: There are some studies which also evaluate IMERG products over mainland China, e.g., Tian et al. (2018, https://doi.org/10.1175/JHM-D-17-0161.1), Chen and Li (2016, https://doi.org/10.3390/rs8060472), Tang et al. (2016, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jhydrol.2015.12.008). Please do a thorough investigation. What are the differences and main innovation of this study compared with previous studies?
2. Lines 130-131: It is better to revised as “temperate, subtropical, tropical regions from north to south”.
3. Line 140-141: The use of “predominance” “excess” “deficit” is strange. Please rewrite this sentence.
4. Section 3.1.2: Please clarify how you define different regions in China (e.g., southeast, south, northwest, northeast regions) and show them in Figure 1.
5. Figure 2: Please add units for the axes.
6. Line 309: What is the criterion for “high correlation”?
7. Line 323: How do you define an outlier?
8. Lines 323-325: What are the possible reasons for the poor performance at these sites? Are they affected by the terrain, climate, or other factors?
9. Lines 328-338: I think it is because the rainfall amount is usually higher in southeast and southern China. The relative errors may be smaller in the southeast and southern China than those in the northwest and Mongolia regions if the MAE is divided by Si. In Line 338, it is inappropriate to equate RMSE or MAE with relative error.
10. Figure 3: Please add the units for RMSE and MAE.
11. Line 352: “R value” or “CC value”?
12. Line 365: Remove the first “correlation”.
13. Lines 372-373: What are the possible reasons?
14. Line 383: Why are the RMSE and MAE of IMERG-F in high-altitude areas are higher?
15. Lines 412-414: Why is the precipitation underestimated by IMERG under low-altitude jet stream background? Any references?
16. Figures 5, 7, 8: How do you obtain the precipitation over the sea from the gauges? And please add the units.
17. Section 3.2.3: Please mention which figure you are describing.
18. Line 486-490: How do the cold air activity, warm and humid airflow, and tropical convergence zone affect the estimation error? From my understanding, these factors affect the occurrence of rainfall. But how do they affect the estimation error?
19. Lines 511, 514: How do you find these peaks? There is no 05:00-08:00 or 14:00-17:00 in Figure 8.
20. Line 513: Where is Jiangnan area?
21. Lines 519-522: What is the evidence for this conclusion? I did not find the analysis of individual heavy precipitation events.
22. Section 3.3.2: The time mentioned in this section is different from Figure 9.
23. Line 549: “Average Rainfall” should be corrected as “average rainfall”.
24. Line 581: “IMEG” should be corrected as “IMERG”.
25. Figure 10: The color for gauge in the legend is wrong. And please add unit for precipitation intensity. There is not enough analysis of the right figure.
26. Line 598: As defined in section 2.3.2, <0.1 mm should be the “no rain” category. Which are small rainfall levels?
27. Lines 618-620: Can you show this result?
28. Figure 11: Please add the unit for rainfall intensity.
29. Lines 666-667: What does “the saturation tendency of satellite echoes” mean?
30. Line 726-728, Reference 17: What is this reference?
Overall, the quality of English language is OK.
Author Response
Dear Reviewer,
Thank you for your valuable feedback and suggestions on our manuscript titled "Evaluation and Applicability Analysis of GPM Satellite Precipitation over Mainland China". We sincerely appreciate your time and effort in reviewing our work. We have carefully considered all your comments and have made revisions to address the concerns raised.
Please find my itemized responses in the attachment and my corrections in the revised manuscript.
Best regards,
Xinshun Pan
School of Atmospheric Sciences, Sun Yat-sen University
Author Response File: 
Author Response.docx
Reviewer 2 Report
Please find my comments in the attachment
Comments for author File: 
Comments.pdf
Author Response
Dear Reviewer,
Thank you for your valuable feedback and suggestions on our manuscript titled "Evaluation and Applicability Analysis of GPM Satellite Precipitation over Mainland China". We sincerely appreciate your time and effort in reviewing our work. We have carefully considered all your comments and have made revisions to address the concerns raised.
Please find my itemized responses in the attachment and my corrections in the revised manuscript.
Best regards,
Xinshun Pan
School of Atmospheric Sciences, Sun Yat-sen University
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
Reviewer 3 Report
This article examines the performance of GPM satellite precipitation products (early run, late run, and final) over Mainland China. Generally, I found it interesting for the journal’s audience and easy to follow from the readers. The main points for revision and the reviewer suggestions are listed below:
· In the abstract give some numerical results regarding the error metrics used in this study.
· Line 89. Give some examples of using GPM satellite products as input parameters in environmental modeling so as to highlight the importance o such data, particularly in data-scare areas. For instance, a recent study integrates GPM precipitation and a hydrological model for early warning and monitoring flash flood phenomena (https://doi.org/10.1002/met.2079). Moreover, GPM data was used for the estimation of the rainfall erosivity based on the original RUSLE approach on a large scale (https://hess.copernicus.org/articles/26/1907/2022/) and sustainable water resources management (https://doi.org/10.1029/2017WR022437)
· In the last paragraph of the introduction please state the novel points of your study compared to similar researches. What’s new for example from the Kazamias work (2022) despite the different geographical regions (https://doi.org/10.1016/j.atmosres.2021.106014).
· Line 143. Add a comment to the legend of Figure 1 to help the reader understand what these dots (points) in the map means. “Figure 1. Map of the study area containing the distribution of national meteorological stations (dot symbols or points) and the number of data.”
· Line 148. How to handle the download data (format?) Do you use any Python code or else?
· Line 222. Are these metrics typically used when precipitation datasets compare with gauges? Any example? Can you give the difference in the errors meaning?
· Finally, give some direction for future research based on the results of the current research.
Author Response
Dear Reviewer,
Thank you for your valuable feedback and suggestions on our manuscript titled "Evaluation and Applicability Analysis of GPM Satellite Precipitation over Mainland China". We sincerely appreciate your time and effort in reviewing our work. We have carefully considered all your comments and have made revisions to address the concerns raised.
Please find my itemized responses in the attachment and my corrections in the revised manuscript.
Best regards,
Xinshun Pan
School of Atmospheric Sciences, Sun Yat-sen University
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
Round 2
Reviewer 1 Report
Line 617-618: This sentence is redundant (similar to Line 613-614). Please remove it.
Author Response
Dear Reviewer,
Thank you for your valuable feedback and suggestion on our manuscript titled "Evaluation and Applicability Analysis of GPM Satellite Precipitation over Mainland China" again. We sincerely appreciate your time and effort in reviewing our work. Please find my itemized responses in below and my corrections in the revised manuscript.
Point 1: Line 617-618: This sentence is redundant (similar to Line 613-614). Please remove it.
Response 1: Thanks for the suggestion. The sentence has been removed. (line 617, page18)
Best regards,
Xinshun Pan
School of Atmospheric Sciences, Sun Yat-sen University
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
Reviewer 3 Report
The manuscript has been sufficiently improved and warrant publication in Remote Sensing journal
Author Response
Dear Reviewer,
Thank you for your approval on our manuscript titled "Evaluation and Applicability Analysis of GPM Satellite Precipitation over Mainland China" again. We sincerely appreciate your time and effort in reviewing our work.
Best regards,
Xinshun Pan
School of Atmospheric Sciences, Sun Yat-sen University
