Improvements of ADAM3 by Incorporating New Dust Emission Reduction Formulations Based on Real-Time MODIS NDVI

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Review of “Improvements of ADAM3 …” by Cho et al.

The paper deals with the relevant topic of (changes in) dust production in East Asia and the (general good) capability of ADAM3 to represent the dust in terms of PM10.

The paper is “nice and easy to read” and well structured. The methods are adequate.

I have only a couple of minor points, listed below:

Table 1: please explain the value total

Fig 3: it is (to me) surprising to see so little difference in PM10 in NW China and S Mongolia. Do you have any idea how to explain this?

Fig 4a and 4b, line 222: Did I understand this correctly – you compare the RMSE between the calculated PM10 versus the observed PM10 (for “old” set up in Fig 4a) and so on?

Fig 5: as the old / new RF are basically the same for Mongolia (Fig 3c) there cannot be difference for this region. Maybe you can state this more directly.

Fig 6: Honestly, I do not like this figure too much (but you can leave it in the manuscript). I suppose the fitting curves are only hypothetical fits and if they represent some physical sense this must be considered elsewhere, does it not? Second, you can do such a plot for the terrain type, but the largest changes in RF were found in inner Mongolia region (and might be hence, a bit independent of terrain type?) Could you mark in Fig 6 the data point in the box of largest changes in RF from Fig 3c with another symbol? My question is: what is more important: the ground type or the geographic location?

Line 292: “desertification”: but the PM10 decreased… maybe write that dust production can both de- or increase over time (and is certainly not yet fully understood).

Line 308-309: non-linear response: if you want to mention this in the conclusion you need to provide more information how you did the fitting and why it contains some physical insight above at Fig 6.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

This study analyzed and presented the improvements of ADAM3 with the near-real time MODIS NDVI data. The manuscripts are well written and organized accordingly. However, I have a few questions about the results. Please refer to the comments below.

Line 99-102: Could you please provide the units of each variable in equation (1)?

Line 114: Is the “Natural emission amounts” added for ADAM3? Just above (Line 108-110), you didn’t mention this parameter.

Line 137: Currently most of the MODIS/Aqua products are in Collection 6.1. Is it the latest product?

Line 146-147, Line 152: Previously, this study mentioned that improvements are “evaluated using 6-h mean PM10 mass concentrations observed at 262 sites in the Asian dust source regions in Inner Mongolia and Manchuria during the spring (March to May) of 2017.”. Now, here it uses statistics of RMSE and skill score. Both parameters (RMSE, SS) seem to be relying on RMSE only. Are there any reasons for not considering R (correlation coefficients) or slope? Do you have the scatter plot for the before and after?

Figure2-6: Same question as above. It seems very significant in terms of RMSE, but it would be better to show scatter plot itself.

Line 184: and-type à Sand-type?

Line 215: missing periods.

Section 4: As I know, separate discussion part is mandatory for the “Remote Sensing” journal. Please separate into 4. Discussion and 5. Conclusion. 

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx