Dust Characteristics Observed by Unmanned Aerial Vehicle over the Taklimakan Desert
, Ali Mamtimin 1,4,5,6, Xinghua Yang 8, Yu Wang 1,4,5,6 and Lu Meng 1,4,5,6Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
The review concerned an article entitled: Dust Feature Observed by Unmanned Aerial Vehicle over 2 Taklimakan Desert. The topic air pollution by PM particles is very important this days, especially in locations with high amount of PM in air. Because I’m not an English native speaker I want be checking the manuscripts language, but I see some mistake which can be corrected. I’m recommending to check the manuscript by native speaker.
Overall, the article is very interesting and provides an interesting approach to the problem. Bu also I think it is much mainly local, because this type of pollution, as the authors themselves write, is specific for this type of desert.
Line 38 – The world dust is not very scientifically – I am suggesting it to change for particulate matter and be more preside.
Line 43. – Do authors know in how many countries the PM from this desert can be found? And how big area its infects.
Line 64 – this sentence must be changed its hard to understand
Line 70 – Why the measurement were in only one month, not over the year?
Line 77-80 – I do not think this part is needed. Its obvious information.
Line 83. The period from 1 July to 31 of July is specific? Its summer time, do the same observations will be in the winter? It do matter? Authors should explain why this time was chosen.
Line 90. More information about weather, topography etc. is needed to show the background of the Experiment.
Line 104. Why this hours were chosen, only to show the distribution over the day, or there an other reason
Line 114 – I do not think to show those seizes is needed here.
Figure 4. Do authors cann add the SE in this figure.
Line 338 – In the conclusion first paragraph my questions is – why? Authors just show data, and not trying to explain?
Line 350 How it was during one day. What was the differences?
Line 364. Some summarizing concussion is needed. Maybe some predictions
Author Response
Journal: Remote Sensing
Article title: Dust Characteristics Observed by Unmanned Aerial Vehicle over the Taklimakan Desert
Manuscript number: remotesensing-1588329
Dear Editors and Reviewers:
Thank you for your letter and for the reviewers’ comments concerning our manuscript entitled “Dust Characteristics Observed by Unmanned Aerial Vehicle over the Taklimakan Desert (remotesensing-15883292)”. These comments are all valuable and very helpful for revising and improving our paper, as well as the important guiding significance to our researches. We have studied comments carefully and have made correction which we hope meet with approval. Revised portion are marked in revised manuscript. The point-to-point responses to reviewers’ comments are as follows.
Reviewer #1:
The review concerned an article entitled: Dust Feature Observed by Unmanned Aerial Vehicle over 2 Taklimakan Desert. The topic air pollution by PM particles is very important this days, especially in locations with high amount of PM in air. Because I’m not an English native speaker I want be checking the manuscripts language, but I see some mistake which can be corrected. I’m recommending to check the manuscript by native speaker. Overall, the article is very interesting and provides an interesting approach to the problem. But also I think it is much mainly local, because this type of pollution, as the authors themselves write, is specific for this type of desert.
Response: Thanks for your comments. We have proofed the language by native speaker.
- Line 38 – The word dust is not very scientifically – I am suggesting it to change for particulate matter and be more preside.
Response: Thanks for your comments. We have changed “dust” to “particulate matter” (Line 38).
- Line 43. – Do authors know in how many countries the PM from this desert can be found? And how big area its infects.
Response: Thanks for your comments. There are two major paths for Taklimakan Desert (TD) dust aerosols to be transported to downwind regions: (1) the transport from the Qilian Mountain, Mongolia to the Pacific Ocean can take 3–4 days and (2) the path from the Qaidam Basin through Qinghai and Gansu provinces to reach the Pacific Ocean takes longer time and impacts more regions than the first path (Huang et al., 2014). In addition to the two paths, TD dust can travel across the Hexi Corridor and Loess Plateau to reach southeastern China, such as the Yangtze River Delta (J. Liu et al., 2011) and even Hong Kong and Taiwan (Wang et al., 2011).
- Line 64 – this sentence must be changed its hard to understand.
Response: Thanks for your comments. We have revised this sentence to “However, the size distribution of suspended dust always varies spatially and temporally even in the same dust event” (Lines 63-64).
- Line 70 – Why the measurement were in only one month, not over the year?
Response: Thanks for your comments. This is an intensive observation experiment for some scientific issues during a special period. It is not a routine observation (Line 69). We have given the corresponding explanation in the revised manuscript (Lines 78-83).
- Line 77-80 – I do not think this part is needed. Its obvious information.
Response: Thanks for your comments. We have deleted this section (Lines 77-80).
- Line 83. The period from 1 July to 31 of July is specific? Its summer time, do the same observations will be in the winter? It do matter? Authors should explain why this time was chosen.
Response: Thanks for your comments. We have explained the reasons for choosing this period of time in revised manuscript as follows: The dust weather mainly occurs in the hinterland and south of the TD; and it is concentrated in spring and summer. Zhou et al. found that the annual mean dust days of TZ and MF were more than 200 days according to ten years of meteorological data, indicating dust weather as their main weather phenomenon [6]. Therefore, an intensive field experiment was conducted from 1 July to 31 July 2021 at the TZ and MF experimental stations, Xinjiang Province, China (Figure 1) (Lines 78-83).
- Line 90. More information about weather, topography etc. is needed to show the background of the Experiment.
Response: Thanks for your comments. We have added more information about weather, topography etc to show the background of the experiment in revised manuscript as follows: The dust weather mainly occurs in the hinterland and south of the TD; and it is concentrated in spring and summer. Zhou et al. found that the annual mean dust days of TZ and MF were more than 200 days according to ten years of meteorological data, indicating dust weather as their main weather phenomenon [6]. Therefore, an intensive field experiment was conducted from 1 July to 31 July 2021 at the TZ and MF experimental stations, Xinjiang Province, China (Figure 1). The geomorphology of TZ area is dominated by the sand dunes [21]; MF is in the convergence and rising area of the TD wind field [22] (Lines 78-85).
- Line 104. Why this hours were chosen, only to show the distribution over the day, or there an other reason
Response: Thanks for your comments. This time is selected according to the occurrence, development and extinction of the boundary layer, which is also consistent with the sounding time (Lines 125).
- Line 114 – I do not think to show those seizes is needed here.
Response: Thanks for your comments. We have deleted this section.
- Figure 4. Do authors cann add the SE in this figure.
Response: Thanks for your comments. I am sorry that I don't understand “SE”. There is no abbreviation of “SE” in the article.
- Line 338 – In the conclusion first paragraph my questions is – why? Authors just show data, and not trying to explain?
Response: Thanks for your comments. The relevant explanations in the conclusion are shown in Section 3.
- Line 350 How it was during one day. What was the differences?
Response: Thanks for your comments. We compared the dust pollution day and the clear day, the “temperature difference” is the dust pollution day minus the clear day (Lines 337).
- Line 364. Some summarizing concussion is needed. Maybe some predictions
Response: Thanks for your comments. We have deleted some predictions in revised manuscript (Lines 352).
Author Response File: 
Author Response.docx
Reviewer 2 Report
General comment:
The paper “Dust feature observed by unmanned aerial vehicle over Taklimakan Desert” by Zhou et al. analyses the composition of particulate matter in Taklimakan Desert through the use of data acquired from in-situ air quality monitoring stations, unmanned aerial vehicle, environmental particulate matter analyser and GPS sounding balloons, discussing the relationship of desert dust content with temperature, humidity, wind speed and PBL height. The paper is well structured and the results clear and well discussed. Therefore, also given the importance of the topic dealt with, the Reviewer recommends accepting the paper for publication after making the modifications listed below.
Specific comments:
Abstract: Only introduce the acronyms used in the abstract. E.g., ABL can be removed.
LL.85-87: Is it relative or specific humidity? What sensors are there? The sentence is too general.
L. 86: Are they daily-averaged data? At what height from the ground are they measured? What is the temporal resolution?
L. 132: “in_version” please remove the space
LL. 129-133: In the sentence, there is a repetition. Please rephrase the sentence.
Figure 2: Please, uniform the ranges of the y-axes
LL. 273-275: The sentence is not clear, please reformulate.
Comments for author File: 
Comments.pdf
Author Response
Journal: Remote Sensing
Article title: Dust Characteristics Observed by Unmanned Aerial Vehicle over the Taklimakan Desert
Manuscript number: remotesensing-1588329
Dear Editors and Reviewers:
Thank you for your letter and for the reviewers’ comments concerning our manuscript entitled “Dust Characteristics Observed by Unmanned Aerial Vehicle over the Taklimakan Desert (remotesensing-15883292)”. These comments are all valuable and very helpful for revising and improving our paper, as well as the important guiding significance to our researches. We have studied comments carefully and have made correction which we hope meet with approval. Revised portion are marked in revised manuscript. The point-to-point responses to reviewers’ comments are as follows.
Reviewer #2:
The paper “Dust feature observed by unmanned aerial vehicle over Taklimakan Desert” by Zhou et al. analyses the composition of particulate matter in Taklimakan Desert through the use of data acquired from in-situ air quality monitoring stations, unmanned aerial vehicle, environmental particulate matter analyser and GPS sounding balloons, discussing the relationship of desert dust content with temperature, humidity, wind speed and PBL height. The paper is well structured and the results clear and well discussed. Therefore, also given the importance of the topic dealt with, the Reviewer recommends accepting the paper for publication after making the modifications listed below.
Response: Thank you so much for your kindness and your encouragement.
Specific comments:
- Abstract: Only introduce the acronyms used in the abstract. E.g., ABL can be removed.
Response: Thanks for your comments. We have deleted the “ABL”.
- 85-87: Is it relative or specific humidity? What sensors are there? The sentence is too general.
Response: Thanks for your comments. The humidity is relative humidity; in fact, the relative humidity was not used in this study, we have deleted it. We have re-described this paragraph and added the sensors of the observation items in revised manuscript (Lines 78-87).
- 86: Are they daily-averaged data? At what height from the ground are they measured? What is the temporal resolution?
Response: Thanks for your comments. Yes, we obtained the daily averaged data of air temperature, wind speed and atmospheric pressure in this study. Therefore, we have added the Table 1 to describe the measure height and temporal resolution of these items used in this study (Line 88).
- 132: “in_version” please remove the space
Response: Thanks for your comments. We have removed the space (Lines 129).
- 129-133: In the sentence, there is a repetition. Please rephrase the sentence.
Response: Thanks for your comments. We have rephrased the sentence as follows: In this study, we evaluated the ABL height according to the thermodynamic method as follows [23,24]: the potential temperature was calculated based on the temperature profiles and the height where a discontinuous gradient and strong inversion were defined as the ABL height (Lines 126-130).
- Figure 2: Please, uniform the ranges of the y-axes
Response: Thanks for your comments. We have uniformed the ranges of the y-axes as follows:
Figure 2R Temporal variations of temperature, wind speed and sea level pressure in the surface layer during the July 2021 in MF (a) and TZ (b). The yellow shading area represents the dust weather.
- 273-275: The sentence is not clear, please reformulate.
Response: Thanks for your comments. We have reformulated this sentence as follows: Normally, since the ABL sufficiently developed during the day and stabilized at night, the ABL height was measured at 14:00 (the convective boundary layer, CBL) and 02:00 (the stable boundary layer, SBL) [29] (Lines 263-265).
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
This manuscript is a resubmission of an earlier submission. The following is a list of the peer review reports and author responses from that submission.
