Evaluation of Satellite-Based Precipitation Products over Complex Topography in Mountainous Southwestern China

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

In the item 4.1 Temporal and spatial distribution of gauge and satellite data sets  I suggest to explain how you get the daily gauge rain data from 2014 to 2018 shown in figures 2 (a, b and c).

Those data are from a single station over the study are ??

Those data are average values of eigth stations over the catchment ??

 

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Please see the attachment.

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

This study focuses on evaluating satellite-based precipitation products over Yingjing catchment, a mountainous region. The main objectives of this study are 1) verifying the applicability of IMERG and GSMaP products, and 2) exploring the relationship between the performance of these two products and three topographic factors (i.e., elevation, slope, and aspect). To be honest, there are lots of problems in this manuscript, at least in its current form. Therefore, I think it has not reached the criteria of Remote Sensing so far. Even though, I think that there are some suggestions which the authors should pay attention to before submitting this manuscript to other journals. They are listed as follows:

Major concerns:

1.     Page 1 Line 21. “The accuracy of GSMap presents weaker dependence on topography than that of IMERG”. Have authors ever thought about whether there will be a large difference or even a total reverse for this conclusion if you change to another study area or use much more rain gauges? This is because lots of efforts have been made in this field, and it turned out that the accuracy of SBPPs does vary largely in different regions.

2.     Page 1 Lines 21-24. “Our findings not … in mountainous areas”. Frankly, these two findings have already been proved by previous work for the past ten years. To my best knowledge, you may find lots of relevant work on Web of Science (WOS). Therefore, I don’t think this study has much significant scientific value, at least in its current form.

3.     Page 2 Lines 66-68. How to understand “the distribution of rainfall displays a definite pattern of spatial heterogeneity”? Moreover, the authors should cite specific references for this sentence.

4.     Page 3 Lines 117-119. The authors should list specific references here. This is because it is regarded as an important evidence for the description of “the severity of the flood response…made this catchment as a case study for the evaluation of SPBBs”. So far, I think one of the major problems is the lack of important references for some key points.

5.     Page 3 Lines 124-125. Which data for the digital elevation model was employed? I did not see any relevant introduction when I tried to find it throughout the manuscript. Moreover, will the different spatial resolutions affect the topographic value (i.e., elevation, slope, and aspect) greatly?

6.     Here is a very important but fatal problem, namely, the elevation range among all rain gauges is not very large, only from 750 m to 1531 m. You mentioned how complex the terrain of the study area it is in the previous sections, with a range of elevation from 746 m to 3652 m. Therefore, the terrain values of rain gauges were not representative of the entire study area. Consequently, it will make your conclusion inconvincible.

7.     As for Figure 3a, what interpolation method did you use for rain gauge observations? It will present different spatial distribution patterns when different interpolation methods (e.g., IDW, Spline, Kriging) are employed. Furthermore, why did you choose this method to illustrate the rain gauge observations?

8.     For the abstract section, it is better to show some specific data to support the very important result or conclusion produced in this study.

9.     Finally, to make the manuscript presented in an easy-read and scientific way, the authors should polish your manuscript carefully for language by employing a professional company or asking a native speaker for help.

Minor concerns:

1.     Page 1 Line 11. There is an extra letter e in the word Multi-satelliteE. Check spell carefully throughout the manuscript because there are these kinds of errors in many places.

2.     Page 1 Line 20. ‘slop’ should be slope.

3.     Check your grammar carefully throughout the manuscript, e.g., there is an obvious grammar error with the sentence of “They both at a more precise tem-55 poral resolution of 30 min and spatial resolution of 0.1°”, which is located at Page 2 Line 55-56.

4.     Page 3 Lines 99-103. “The rest of the paper … in Section 6”. I think it is a redundant part. I suggest the authors remove it.

5.     Page 3 Line 116. There should be a space between 371.6 and mm. Check carefully throughout the manuscript.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 4 Report

Review of On “Evaluation of Satellite-Based Precipitation Products over Com-2 plex Topography in a Mountainous Catchment”

 

 

In this article, the authors have tried to evaluate two satellite -based precipitation products in mountainous areas and to investigate the effect of topographic features of the region on the performance of the products. The results of such studies can lead to a proper understanding of the parameters of precipitation in mountainous areas for users of satellite products in different applications. However, there are some points which must be revised or addressed in the manuscript.

 

Decision: The paper needs minor modification

 

ABSTRACT

It is suggested that the number of ground stations used in this study along with the most important statistical and numerical results of this research should be given clearly in the abstract

 

Introduction:

This section is good, but:

It is suggested to refer to the previous studies that have focused more on the relationship between the error rate of satellite based rainfall products and the topography of the region in the introduction.

 

#  The color bar of Figure 1d starting from -1!!!

 

 

# Table 4:

It is suggested to bring the values of bias and RMSE with their actual unit in this table and do not use the percentage display.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

Authors addressed the recommendations provided to them. The manuscript has improved its quality. It should be ready for publication following further editing and proofreading to fix English language and formatting errors.

Reviewer 3 Report

The authors provided satisfying responses. However, there are still some spelling mistakes and grammatic problems, so I strongly suggest that the authors should polish their manuscript by employing professional language company or asking native speaker for help.