Gravity-wave-perturbed wind shears derived from SABER temperature observations

Liu, Xiao; Xu, Jiyao; Yue, Jia; Liu, Hanli

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-20-14437-2020

Articles | Volume 20, issue 22

https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-20-14437-2020

© Author(s) 2020. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-20-14437-2020

© Author(s) 2020. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 20, issue 22

Research article

|

27 Nov 2020

Research article |

| 27 Nov 2020

Gravity-wave-perturbed wind shears derived from SABER temperature observations

Xiao Liu, Jiyao Xu, Jia Yue, and Hanli Liu

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Final revised paper (published on 27 Nov 2020)
Preprint (discussion started on 01 Jul 2020)

Interactive discussion

Status: closed

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

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- Supplement

RC1: 'Review on Liu et al.: Shears from SABER', Anonymous Referee #1, 03 Aug 2020
- SC1: 'Response to Reviewer Comments', Xiao Liu, 21 Aug 2020
- AC1: 'Response to review comments by Anonymous Referee #1', Jiyao Xu, 26 Aug 2020
- AC2: 'Response to review comments by Anonymous Referee #1', Jiyao Xu, 26 Aug 2020
RC2: 'Review of "Gravity Waves Induced Wind Shears Derived from SABER Temperature Observations"', Anonymous Referee #2, 09 Aug 2020
- SC2: 'Response to Reviewer Comments', Xiao Liu, 21 Aug 2020
- AC3: 'Response to review comments by Anonymous Referee #2', Jiyao Xu, 26 Aug 2020

Peer-review completion

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

AR by Jiyao Xu on behalf of the Authors (27 Aug 2020) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Referee Nomination & Report Request started (04 Sep 2020) by Franz-Josef Lübken

RR by Anonymous Referee #1 (02 Oct 2020)

Suggestions for revision or reasons for rejection

The revised paper describes the methods and potential caveats very thoroughly. In particular, the added figures allow to estimate the influence of the most critical part, i.e. the influence of the frequency inferred from the horizontal wavelength estimate. The findings are original and relevant for the field. I hence recommend publication basically as is. A few technical corrections/suggestions are given below, but I also would like to suggest additional language editing by the Copernicus staff, who usually do a very good job on this.

P1L30 these are still a very few selected sites -> omit globally

P2L3 ascribed -> attributed ; (Gs) -> (GWs)

P2L12 Based on ...

P2L21 are are

P3L11 noises -> noise

P3L12 omit 'and' before 'in the MLT'; ... and since they are likey ...

P3L19 Retrieval of temperature has reached a very good quality ??? Long term stability of the SABER instrument is very high over the recent 18 years of measurements ???

P3L30 For conservative propagation and without refraction, a linear monochromatic GW can be described as ()

P4L17 That's a jump: you first need to say how you actually want to use k and in particular the propagation direction

P5L15 Omit: While

P6L17 (in short ...)

P9L5 is chosen to include data from both north-viewing and south-viewing yaw periods and hence to cover ...

P9L6 for calculating zonal means

P9L13 ... (cf. contour ...

P13L5 and peaks in June

P16L22 Make it two sentences again: Due to the important role large vertical wind shears play in the dynamics and electrodynamics of the MLT, there is a need for global observations. In response to this need, a method ...

P16L24 of linear GWs. Data employed are SABER ...

P16L11 "new techniques" of analysis would not really help us. I think you have done what is possible with the current data. For new observations you could, if you like, be more explicit: ... develop new techniques for remote sensing temperatures or winds from space such as e.g. limb imaging techniques allowing to infer temperatures in 3D along the orbital track at high horizontal and vertical resolution. As said, if you like. Limb imaging techniques are mature, we need the opportunity to bring them to space and they would be a tremendous step forward.

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RR by Anonymous Referee #2 (11 Oct 2020)

ED: Publish subject to technical corrections (12 Oct 2020) by Franz-Josef Lübken

AR by Jiyao Xu on behalf of the Authors (13 Oct 2020) Author's response Manuscript

Short summary

Large wind shears in the mesosphere and lower thermosphere are recognized as a common phenomenon. Simulation and ground-based observations show that the main contributor of large wind shears is gravity waves. We present a method of deriving wind shears induced by gravity waves according to the linear theory and using the global temperature observations by SABER (Sounding of the Atmosphere using Broadband Emission Radiometry). Our results agree well with observations and model simulations.