Development and assessment of a higher-spatial-resolution (4.4 km) MISR aerosol optical depth product  using  AERONET-DRAGON data

Garay, Michael J.; Kalashnikova, Olga V.; Bull, Michael A.

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-17-5095-2017

Articles | Volume 17, issue 8

https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-17-5095-2017

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

Special issue:

Meso-scale aerosol processes, comparison and validation studies...

https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-17-5095-2017

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

Articles | Volume 17, issue 8

Research article

|

19 Apr 2017

Research article |

| 19 Apr 2017

Development and assessment of a higher-spatial-resolution (4.4 km) MISR aerosol optical depth product using AERONET-DRAGON data

Michael J. Garay, Olga V. Kalashnikova, and Michael A. Bull

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Final revised paper (published on 19 Apr 2017)
Preprint (discussion started on 01 Aug 2016)

Interactive discussion

Status: closed

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

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- Supplement

RC1: 'Review of Garay et al', Andrew Sayer, 16 Aug 2016
- AC1: 'Response to Reviewer #1', Michael Garay, 20 Jan 2017
RC2: 'Review of "Development and Assessment of a High Spatial Resolution (4.4 km) MISR Aerosol Product Using AERONET-DRAGON Data" by M. J. Garay et al.', Anonymous Referee #2, 19 Aug 2016
- RC3: 'Follow-up comment', Andrew Sayer, 22 Aug 2016
- AC2: 'Response to Reviewer #2', Michael Garay, 20 Jan 2017

Peer-review completion

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

AR by Michael Garay on behalf of the Authors (15 Feb 2017) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Referee Nomination & Report Request started (23 Feb 2017) by Patricia Quinn

RR by Andrew Sayer (28 Feb 2017)

RR by Anonymous Referee #2 (02 Mar 2017)

Suggestions for revision or reasons for rejection

Thank you, Dr. Garay and coauthors, for implementing many of the suggestions in the review and clarifying many of the points that were confusing. If I may just make a few additional suggestions.

First, the explanation you gave in your response to both reviewers about the possible or likely reason for the decrease in the high AOD bias in the 4.4 km product is very helpful. I think it would be very appropriate and helpful to also include this explanation in the Discussions and Conclusions section of the paper, with the proper reference to the earlier Kahn paper of course. I think even if it is not original to this paper and not a definitive conclusion, leaving out any explanation for the primary finding of the paper is simply too confusing for readers. Reference Kahn et al and put in caveats and teasers about future work by all means, but please include some discussion about the cause of the improvement.

Your conclusion is incomplete without the results of the assessment, that is, the results of the comparisons in Figure 4. Please repeat the quantitative results in the conclusion and also in the abstract.

I realize it is a pain to remake figures, but the map figures, 1, 5, 6, and 7 are very hard to see. I appreciate that the figures were zoomed in by about 50% but it is not really enough. The AERONET circles need to be big enough that we can see the color inside the black border. At 100% zoom, the color is not even perceptible. At 400% zoom, it is OK, but at that size, we can't read the caption anymore because it doesn't fit on the screen (and some people still like to read hard-copies). However, more than half the area inside the figures is outside the region covered by the AERONET stations where any conclusion can be made. Is it really necessary to show whole MISR blocks? Maybe if you zoom in on the data region of interest it will allow you to make the AERONET circles big enough to see without obscuring the MISR pixels. The size of the circles seems critically important to me because it is the whole point of the figure; however, I would also suggest that other figure annotations (colorbar labels in 1,5,6,7 and axis and site labels in Figure 3) should be increased so they are at least about a font size of 9 or 10 when laid out with the text. Right now, I'd guess they are about font size 6 at best.

The result of this research is very remarkable and definitely deserves to be published. If these missing pieces are put in, I think it will strengthen an already very good paper. Thanks.

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ED: Reconsider after minor revisions (Editor review) (03 Mar 2017) by Patricia Quinn

AR by Michael Garay on behalf of the Authors (11 Mar 2017) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Publish as is (16 Mar 2017) by Patricia Quinn

AR by Michael Garay on behalf of the Authors (27 Mar 2017)

Short summary

Satellite data from the MISR instrument were used to produce aerosol optical depth (AOD) retrievals at 4.4 km spatial resolution, a factor of 16 improvement relative to the currently operational 17.6 km product. Retrievals were compared with high-spatial-resolution ground-based observations made by AERONET-DRAGON deployments around the globe. It was found that the 4.4 km MISR retrievals performed significantly better than the 17.6 km retrievals in comparisons made at over 100 individual sites.

Development and assessment of a higher-spatial-resolution (4.4 km) MISR aerosol optical depth product using AERONET-DRAGON data

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Interactive discussion

Peer-review completion

Development and assessment of a higher-spatial-resolution (4.4 km) MISR aerosol optical depth product using AERONET-DRAGON data