Analysis of the Interactions between the 200 hPa Jet and Air Pollutants in the Near-Surface Layer over East Asia in Summer
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
I find the topic and the results of the manuscript interesting and informative. The conclusion is rather long and can be shortened.
I recommend the manuscript to be published with minor revisions.
The following minors changes should be made
(1) Line 106-120: To be deleted as they do not belong to the manuscript.
(2) Line 271: "month" not "mouth"
(3) Line 275: "higher than39" should be "higher than 39"
(4) Line 675: "OZONE VARIABILITY, JET, AND CLIMATE CHANGE" should be lower case
Author Response
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
Overall, the study is interesting as it attempts to find the link between surface pollutants and a large-scale meteorological phenomenon – East-Asian upper-level jet. It can be published when the following comments have been addressed.
Major comments
In the Intro, I would like to see a clear hypothesis why the jet located at 200 hPa should be related to the boundary layer characteristics (PM).
In Methods, it would be good to identify to what variables you apply these methods, not just shortly describe what the method is for. Also, some reference for these methods should be given and the software the authors used for analysis should be mentioned. Method description does not mention eigenfunctions (modes) although the authors use them later in Results.
Fig. 10 is redundant, surface wind distribution can be shown in one (or all) of the panels in Fig. 8. In addition, it is hard to see from Fig. 10 when the parameter is larger/smaller, although the authors mention it in the text (e.g., L. 293, 300). I would recommend to use a diagram showing parameter values in different summer months instead, to visualize the difference in pollutants between months.
When the authors discuss that some parameter is significantly higher/lower when the position of the jet is more to the north, it would be nice for a reader to have an idea about how strong this effect is, e.g., how much higher/lower pollutants' concentrations are?
Section ‘Discussion and conclusions’ just repeats extensively the results, there is in fact no discussion or comparison to other studies.
Minor comments
- 106-120 are from the author guide, remove.
- 150 – should be y_kj
Geographical position of Tarim basin and Plain should already be mentioned in L 221 and further
L 229-230 – difficult to speak about trend having 3 points
L261 – is it spatial distribution? Apparently Fig. 6 and Fig. 7 have wrong captions.
L271 – mouth to month
L312-313 – from what I’ve read, there’s a connection btw the surface wind and pollutants rather than a connection btw the jet and pollutants. This is related to my comment regarding Intro.
L321 – refer to figure first or should this first sentence just be removed? Not clear what it refers to and reads as a part of caption
Fig. 11: it seems the color scale in panels (e) and (f) is reverse? Same in Fig. 12. I would also change the figure to place PM2.5 and PM10 close to each other, not separate them by ozone.
L 390: 'left and' -> 'right'
Author Response
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Round 2
Reviewer 1 Report
Following the authors' response and revision of the manuscript, the current manuscript is fine for publication
