Performance Evaluation and Noise Mitigation of the FY-3E Microwave Humidity Sounder
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
Please see in attached pdf-file.
Comments for author File: 
Comments.pdf
Author Response
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Author Response File: 
Author Response.docx
Reviewer 2 Report
A general comment about the use of acronyms along the paper: there are a lot of acronyms and it is difficult to understand the meaning of some paragraphs, because it is not possible to memorize all the acronyms. It would be very useful for a reader to add a list of acronyms and their meaning, maybe at the end of the paper, before the References section.
Additional comments:
Abstract (Line 4)
What is ERA-5?. Although it is mentioned later (line 136) it would be better to add a reference about this background field.
Instruments (line 91)
In the paper there is not a description of the Instruments (block diagrams, receivers technical details, etc). A reference about these detailed information of Instruments should be included. It seems that this kind of reference is not included in the References section.
Table 1 (between lines 109 and 110):
What means QH and QV (in polarization column)?
Line 153:
What is NH?. Please explain this acronym. Is it Northern Hemisphere?
Author Response
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Author Response File: Author Response.docx
Reviewer 3 Report
This paper shows the on-orbit performance of the humidity sounder on FY3E, and analyzed the noise characteristics both crosstrack and alongtrack in the observations. The measurement bias is also estimated. The paper is well written and represents a good contribution with a new satellite instrument. Therefore, the paper is acceptable for publication after the following issues are addressed:
1) The authors claim that this is "the world's first satellite in early morning orbit". This statement is simply NOT true. In fact, NOAA-15 was launched in 1998 and has been operating in the early morning orbit for decades, with the first AMSU microwave sounder instrument. I am not sure why the authors made such a false claim. There are other early morning orbit satellites as well.
It is possible that FY3E might be "China's first early morning orbit", or a "new satellite in early morning orbit", but certainly not the world's first early morning orbit satellite.
Recall that what happened was that after NOAA-15, NOAA decided to move the orbit to mid morning with the launch of NOAA-17, which was replaced with the Metop series in the mid morning, thus led to a void in the early morning orbit currently. However, the truth is still that NOAA-15 was in the early morning orbit and FY3E is not world's first early morning orbit.
2) Bias, error, and accuracy: The authors used RTM as the truth for evaluating microwave sounder measurements, and used such terms as "bias", "error", and "accuracy". The term "bias" represents the difference between RTM and satellite observations and is better understood. But the term "error" is not well defined, and how is the "error" related to "accuracy" is not well explained. Hope the authors can address that in the revision.
Author Response
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
Round 2
Reviewer 1 Report
I am very much satisfied with the revised paper. It should be publised.
Author Response
Thank you very much for your suggestions.
