the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
| 03 Sep 2024
Orbital-Radar v1.0.0: A tool to transform suborbital radar observations to synthetic EarthCARE cloud radar data
Abstract. The Earth Cloud, Aerosol and Radiation Explorer (EarthCARE) satellite developed by the European Space Agency (ESA) and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) launched in May 2024 carries a novel 94-GHz Cloud Profiling Radar (CPR) with Doppler capability. This work describes the open-source instrument simulator Orbital-Radar, which transforms high-resolution radar data from field observations or forward simulations of numerical models to CPR primary measurements and uncertainties. The transformation accounts for sampling geometry and surface effects. We demonstrate Orbital-Radar's ability to provide realistic CPR views of typical cloud and precipitation scenes. These results provide valuable insights into the capabilities and challenges of the EarthCARE CPR mission and its advantages over the CloudSat CPR. Finally, Orbital-Radar allows for the evaluation of kilometer-scale numerical weather prediction models with EarthCARE CPR observations.
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Status: open (until 29 Oct 2024)
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RC1: 'Comment on gmd-2024-129', Anonymous Referee #1, 08 Sep 2024
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This is relatively simple paper that describes a software tool to emulate EarthCARE or CloudSat measurements given ground-based, airborne, and simulated radar reflectivity and Doppler. I only have a few minor comments below to address before publication.
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Line 73: ‘If the input radar data are from a 35 GHz radar system, then, the technique described in Protat et al. (2010) is used to convert them to 94 GHz’. This is important. Please describe the method at a high level at least.
Line 85: ‘As a result, the surface-up and spacedown view of strongly attenuating cloud and precipitation systems is very different and the comparison of these views using Orbital-Radar is not recommended.’ Are these columns flagged in the output?
Line 119: ‘Thus, a fixed value of 52 dB is used.’ Are you assuming sigma_0 = 52 dB or that the reflectivity factor is 52 dBZ? This is inconsistent wi the table.
Line 187: Bad grammar and duplicated sentence. ‘Finally, these two error terms are combined to estimate the total CPR Doppler velocity uncertainty These two terms are combined to provide the total CPR Doppler velocity uncertainty std(VDOP ):’
Line 204: ‘The MS flag calculation is based on the method from Battaglia’. Again it’s OK to cite but describe at a high level how this works.
I suggest that a table is added that lists all of the variables included in the output files.
Citation: https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-2024-129-RC1
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