The influence of sea- and land-breeze circulations on the diurnal variability in precipitation over a tropical island

Zhu, Lei; Meng, Zhiyong; Zhang, Fuqing; Markowski, Paul M.

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-17-13213-2017

Articles | Volume 17, issue 21

https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-17-13213-2017

© Author(s) 2017. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-17-13213-2017

© Author(s) 2017. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.

Articles | Volume 17, issue 21

Research article

|

08 Nov 2017

Research article |

| 08 Nov 2017

The influence of sea- and land-breeze circulations on the diurnal variability in precipitation over a tropical island

Lei Zhu, Zhiyong Meng, Fuqing Zhang, and Paul M. Markowski

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Final revised paper (published on 08 Nov 2017)
Preprint (discussion started on 24 Apr 2017)

Interactive discussion

Status: closed

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

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RC1: 'Review of “The influence of sea- and land-breeze circulations on the diurnal variability of precipitation over a topical island”', Anonymous Referee #1, 30 May 2017
RC2: 'Review of acp-2017-332', Anonymous Referee #2, 05 Jun 2017
AC1: 'Our responses to each of the comments from all the reviewers are in the supplement PDF file', Zhiyong Meng, 21 Aug 2017

Peer-review completion

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

AR by Zhiyong Meng on behalf of the Authors (21 Aug 2017)

ED: Referee Nomination & Report Request started (23 Aug 2017) by Geraint Vaughan

RR by Anonymous Referee #2 (30 Aug 2017)

RR by Anonymous Referee #1 (16 Sep 2017)

Suggestions for revision or reasons for rejection

Review of "The influence of sea- and land-breeze circulations on the diurnal variability of precipitation over a tropical island."

This work describes the seasonal and diurnal cycle of rainfall over Hainan island in the South China sea. Firstly it uses both rain gauge station data and satellite retrievals (CMORPH) of rainfall to describe the seasonal changes in rainfall associated with the arrival and retreat of the Asian monsoon as well as analysing the proportion of rainfall occurring due the the diurnal cycle across the year. The peak rainfall period is then analysed further using Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) simulations of varying idealisations. The simulations highlight the roles of different meteorological features and ultimately determine the importance of the sea- and land-breeze circulations and the production of downdraughts from convective storms in the production of the diurnal cycle of rainfall.
The manuscript has been modified significantly since I first reviewed it. There are fewer figures, the methodology has become clearer and results are discussed in a more coherent manner. This has greatly improved the way in which this work reads and emphasises the findings of the work much more than in its previous incarnation. As such I believe that this work is publishable after only a few minor technical corrections.

Specific recommendations.

14-20 Sentence too long. Maybe change line 17 to “…as well as numerical simulations. The simulations are the first to use climatological …”
18 delete “periodic”, the boundaries are not periodic as features propagating out of one side are not forced to appear in the lateral boundary conditions on the other side of the domain.
23 delete “as well”
27 change to “simulations have a slight overestimation…”
49 change to “(Dai 2001), tropical convection is also well…”
73-74 change to “gulf and island areas respectively.”
81 change to “This work is…”
103 change to “We also highlight…”
141 do you need to put 0000 UTC in twice?
197-202 What you define is not a percentage. It needs to be multiplied by 100 to be a percentage, this is clear in the range in figure 4 being 0 to 1, not 0 to 100.
277 -278 I am not convinced that they look very similar, certainly diurnal behaviour is similar but the mean values look quite different!
320-321 add numbers before each stage e.g. “The stages are: (1) the establishment of a sea breeze (0600-1200 LST), (2) the peak sea breeze…”
449 It is more usual to say “not shown” rather than “figures omitted”.
458 change to “over tropical areas is poorly…”
465 change to “Most precipitation falls during the warm season…”
467 change to “Precipitation is at a maximum…”
472 change to “The analysis of CMORPH data shows that…”
485-486 change to “Even with an idealized elliptical and flat island, located at…”

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ED: Publish subject to technical corrections (17 Sep 2017) by Geraint Vaughan

AR by Zhiyong Meng on behalf of the Authors (20 Sep 2017) Author's response Manuscript

Short summary

This work shows a strong diurnal rainfall cycle over Hainan island due to land–sea breeze circulations. Years of gauge and CMORPH rainfall datasets were examined. More than 60 % of the total annual precipitation is attributable to the diurnal cycle. The multistage dynamics of the diurnal rainfall cycle and the related land–sea breeze circulations were analyzed based on WRF simulations. The rather high island orography is not a dominant factor in the diurnal variation of rainfall over the island.