Weather Radar in Complex Orography
, Marco Boscacci, Lorenzo Clementi, Marco Gabella, Alessandro Hering, Maurizio Sartori, Ioannis V. Sideris and Bertrand CalpiniRound 1
Reviewer 1 Report
1) This is a very lengthy paper covering so many different aspects of weather radar, especially in mountainous/clutter regions in the Alps. Though useful, in my opinion the paper can be condensed somewhat. For example, Introduction is rather lengthy; description of the systems in various countries is useful but perhaps not entirely necessary for this particular paper. However, authors can decide whether or not to cut back. My recommendation is to do so.
The paper reads more like a hand-book (background information) rather than a journal article with data analyses. On the other hand, it could be considered as a review article with particular emphasis on the operational radars in Switzerland and Austria. It does contain useful information, for example, Fig. 2 and related text are very interesting.
2) Language can also be somewhat improved in a few places, for example:
Line 37: ' ... Doppler radar network was upgraded ...'
Line 48: 'Austria played a pioneering role ...'
Line 379: Kdp (subscript) etc.
Fig. 9 caption: 'Increase of noise level caused by the emission of water in the atmosphere' this needs to be rewritten
3) What about anaprop - anomalous propagation? Though this may be a challenge more for coastal regions rather than mountainous regions, it is worth mentioning.
4) Figure 12 needs more explanation. The terrain profile appears to be the same in all panels ( along N - S) but the radars are in different locations. Can the (large) differences be shown as another figure (or in an Appendix?) or some info regarding the distance to the N - S cross-section (nearest) be provided?
Overall, I recommend publication of this paper, after minor revision, in the MDPI Remote-Sensing Special issue "Radar-Based Studies of Precipitation Systems and Their Microphysics". The paper will be useful for the weather radar community.
Author Response
See attached pdf.
Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
Recommendation: Consider after minor revision
General remarks:
This manuscript reviews various challenges of the weather radar in complex orography during the operational applications, from the location selection of the weather radar until the products generation in real-time. With a large amount of literature review, the authors used the data and products from the Swiss Alps. The operational products include QPE, nowcasting of precipitation, tracking, severity ranking and nowcasting of thunderstorms, hail monitoring and hail nowcasting, hydrometeor classification, wind retrieval and mesocyclone detection, data assimilation in numerical weather prediction, and climatological studies. The content is very extensive, while the manuscript is systematically organized. The weather radar community will appreciate the extensive work of the detailed investigation and summaries of the difficulties and possible solutions of the radar applications in mountainous regions. However, some issues need to be addressed for a publishing decision.
Comments and Suggestions:
In Figure 7, the hail feature is relatively more distinct from other hydrometeor types, and the two radars match well. However, inconsistent classifications could be observed from different radars. Is the hydrometeor classification product only for individual radars?
In Figure 8, the caption mentioned >50dBZ (orange and red pixels), but it needs a complete colormap to represent the reflectivity field better.
In Figure 12, is the converted rain rate normalized? A color key is required for a meaningful representation.
Ln 391-410, “If a beam is shielded, one has to reply on the next higher beam to obtain information about precipitating clouds behind the obstacle.” Does this refer to a complete blockage? A partial beam blockage may also require some discussion here.
The reviewer feels it difficult to understand Figure 10. Is it also along a defined cross-section? How the line between “mountain” and “not visible” is quantitatively derived? Reflectivity compensation?
Ln 457, the QPE was already defined for “quantitative precipitation estimation.”
Ln 472-474, “… which is a major issue when only data from one sweep is considered.” is a little confusing. Does it mean “one radar” and “one elevation”?
Ln 486-488, is the QPE a single-radar product or integrated data from the five radars? If a domain QPE product is generated, what integration scheme is applied?
In Table 1, does the “All products” refer to every product from a single radar or all the five radars? Are all these data a single-radar product? Are there integration processes (i.e., reflectivity, QPE, hydrometeor types, etc.) and timelines?
Figure 15 needs colormaps for the reflectivity and differential phase.
Figure 19 and Table 3. Does each point in Figure 19 represent one gauge location? Could the authors please add some explanation about the “scatter in dB?” May provide some definition. If possible, the reviewer would suggest a scatter map or a bubble chart that shows more about the under/overestimation.
Figure 19 focuses more on the comparisons among the single-polarization QPE products. Since the five radars were upgraded into dual-polarization, would it make more sense to include dual-polarization QPE products? The reviewer here assumed the RainForest are trained and tested with both single-pol and dual-pol data.
The manuscript contains careless grammar mistakes. They are minor but need to be corrected or polished for a Journal publication. Please refer to the listed examples below that are found in the first 98 lines. Please make corresponding corrections in the rest of the manuscript (Ln 99 – Ln 1108).
Ln 8, “poses” -> “pose”
Ln 13, “large value” -> “a large value”
Ln 54, “identical hardware design” -> “an identical hardware design” or “identical hardware designs”
Ln 69, “have” -> “has”
Ln 72, “The today’s” -> “Today’s”
Ln 73, “has been” -> “was”
Ln 76, “central US” -> “the central US”
Ln 80, “To see the weather approaching from the ocean and support traffic at sea one needs to” -> “To see the weather approaching the ocean and support traffic at sea, one needs to”
Ln 93, “In the high Andes of southern Ecuador three inexpensive X-band radars” -> “In the high Andes of southern Ecuador, three inexpensive X-band radars”
Author Response
See attached pdf.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Round 2
Reviewer 1 Report
I have no further comments. The paper can be accepted for publication in MDPI Remote Sensing Special Issue.
