the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
| 31 Aug 2023
Investigating the impact of HARMONIE-WINS50 (cy43) and LOTOS-EUROS (v2.2.002) coupling on NO2 concentrations in The Netherlands
Abstract. Meteorological fields calculated by Numerical Weather Prediction (NWP) Models drive offline Chemical Trans port Models (CTM) to solve the transport, chemical reactions, and atmospheric interaction over the geographical domain of interest. In this way, forecasts and (re-)analyses provided by NWP can be used for air quality forecasting, climate modeling, and environmental studies. The more precise the meteorological input data represents the atmospheric dynamics, the better the CTM represents pollutant transport, mixing, and the subsequent impact on surface air quality. HARMONIE (HIRLAM ALADIN Research on Mesoscale Operational NWP in Euromed) is a state-of-the-art non-hydrostatic NWP community model used at several European weather agencies to forecast weather at the local and/or regional scale. In this work, the HARMONIE WINS50 (cycle 43 cy43) reanalysis data set at a resolution of 0.025° × 0.025° covering an area surrounding the North Sea for the years 2019–2021 was offline coupled to the state-of-the-art model LOTOS-EUROS (v2.2.002), which is CTM that is one of the members of the Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS) ensemble of CTMs that is used to produce operational air quality forecasts over Europe and at a higher resolution also over the Netherlands. The impact on simulated NO2 concentrations of using meteorological fields from HARMONIE in LOTOS-EUROS compared to the use of fields from ECMWF (here used at 0.7° ×0.7°) is evaluated against ground-level sensors and TROPOMI tropospheric NO2 vertical columns. Furthermore, the difference between crucial meteorological input parameters such as the boundary layer height and the vertical diffusion coefficient between the hydrostatic (ECMWF) and non-hydrostatic (HARMONIE) model fields is studied, and the vertical profiles of temperature, humidity, and wind are evaluated against meteorological vertical profile observations at Cabauw in The Netherlands. The results of these first evaluations of the LOTOS-EUROS model performance in both configurations are used to investigate current uncertainties in air quality forecasting in relation to driving meteorological parameters and to assess the potential for improvements in high-resolution air quality forecasting episodes based on the HARMONIE NWP model.
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The requested preprint has a corresponding peer-reviewed final revised paper. You are encouraged to refer to the final revised version.
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Journal article(s) based on this preprint
Interactive discussion
Status: closed
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CEC1: 'Comment on egusphere-2023-1418', Juan Antonio Añel, 06 Oct 2023
Dear authors,Unfortunately, after checking your manuscript, it has come to our attention that it does not comply with our "Code and Data Policy".https://www.geoscientific-model-development.net/policies/code_and_data_policy.htmlYou have archived your code on a Git repository. However, Git repositories are not suitable for scientific publication. You must use other alternatives for long-term archival and publishing when submitting to our journal, as stated in our policy. Therefore, please, publish your code in one of the appropriate repositories, and reply to this comment with the relevant information (link and DOI) as soon as possible, as it should be available before the Discussions stage. Also, currently, to access the Git repository, it is necessary to provide login details. Please, be aware that we do not accept this practice. all the code and data must be publicly available without the need for registration or login.I would like to note that in the repository, you must publish the full codes for the HARMONIE and LOTOS-EUROS versions that you use for the submitted manuscript.Please, note that if you do not fix this problem, we will have to reject your manuscript for publication in our journal. Actually, your manuscript should not have been accepted in Discussions, given this lack of compliance with our policy. Therefore, the current situation with your manuscript is irregular.Also, you must include in a potentially reviewed version of your manuscript the modified 'Code and Data Availability' section, with the DOI of the code and model outputs if applicable.Regards,Juan A. Añel
Geosci. Model Dev. Executive EditorCitation: https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2023-1418-CEC1 -
AC1: 'Reply on CEC1', Andres Yarce Botero, 11 Oct 2023
Dear Editor,
The following is the link for the open access repository where the version of the model used for this publication is deposited
https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.8431342
Sorry for the inconvenience using the git repository
Thanks in advance for your help
Andrés Yarce Botero
Citation: https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2023-1418-AC1 -
CEC2: 'Reply on AC1', Juan Antonio Añel, 11 Oct 2023
Dear authors,
I have checked the new repository for your code, and I have not found in it the HARMONIE input dataset that should be included according to the description (e.g.
/home/boteroay/LOTOS_HARMONIEV2.2002/openle/v2.2/proj/myproj/002/rc/lotos-euros-data-meteo-harmonie.rc) and that is necessary to replicate your work.
Please, double-check it, and if necessary, produce a new version of your Zenodo repository that includes the missing data. Then reply to this comment with he information for the new repository.
Regards,
Juan A. Añel
Geosci. Model Dev. Executive Editor
Citation: https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2023-1418-CEC2 -
AC2: 'Reply on CEC2', Andres Yarce Botero, 11 Oct 2023
Dear Editor,
The input data set is more of the data allowed. Per month its size is 2 Tb. Do you think I should only for example upload one day? just as a test?
Best regards,
Andrés
Citation: https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2023-1418-AC2 -
CEC3: 'Reply on AC2', Juan Antonio Añel, 11 Oct 2023
Dear authors,
First, thanks for your quick reply to this issue. If the total size of the input dataset is an issue, as it seems to be the case, then it would be good that you make explicit how to access it in its current repository. We would expect that, if possible, such a dataset has a DOI, even if it is stored in your "regular" supercomputer. If your datacenter offers such possibility, you should take advantage of it.
If including a test case with the manuscript is possible, it would be good, but only if it is representative of the results obtained.
Best regards,
Juan A. Añel
Geosci. Model Dev. Executive Editor
Citation: https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2023-1418-CEC3 -
AC3: 'Reply on CEC3', Andres Yarce Botero, 12 Oct 2023
Dear Editor
About the first suggestion you gave me, there is not a DOI properly of the dataset, it is saved in the ECMWF (https://www.ecmwf.int/en/computing/access-computing-facilities) cluster in this specific path I can reference ( ec:/nkl/harmonie/WINS50/) . What I feel interesting is that all this datasets are not completely open because at the end you have to be part of a specific group of countries to access the data, in my case the project I work is from Europe and I can access, but If I were for example where I come from, Colombia, without the interaction with somebody from an Europe country I cannot get this data. This is a data widely used of meteorological fields so this discussion of open data make me thing of it and is interesting to me what do you think about it.
About the second option I think is possible, if I upload only one or lets try at least two days of data somebody with the model versions is able to run it.
Thanks for your help and discussion
Andrés Yarce Botero
Citation: https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2023-1418-AC3
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AC3: 'Reply on CEC3', Andres Yarce Botero, 12 Oct 2023
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CEC3: 'Reply on AC2', Juan Antonio Añel, 11 Oct 2023
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AC2: 'Reply on CEC2', Andres Yarce Botero, 11 Oct 2023
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CEC2: 'Reply on AC1', Juan Antonio Añel, 11 Oct 2023
-
AC1: 'Reply on CEC1', Andres Yarce Botero, 11 Oct 2023
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RC1: 'Comment on egusphere-2023-1418', Anonymous Referee #1, 31 Oct 2023
Investigating the impact of HARMONIE-WINS50 (cy43) and LOTOS-EUROS (v2.2.002) coupling on NO2 concentrations in The Netherlands by Yarce Botero et al.
This MS deals with the coupling of HARMONIE-WINS50 with LOTOS-EUROS models for air quality simulations. However, some details of the models and coupling process are missing or need to be clarified. The MS needs a major revision before it can be accepted. My comments are given below.
Major
- What is the objective of this paper? Testing the meteorological forcing or the air quality simulation? This is not very clear and should be specified
- Section 2.1, what drives the model, ECMWF, or NWP fields from the other model? In the Introduction, you stated the latter, but here you describe ECMWF!
- Table 2: why there are two meteorological fields in LOTUS –EUROS?
- Why there are large differences between measurements and model results (Figure 7)?
- There are some language problems. Some are listed below, but not complete. Please correct them.
Minor
L25-28: The same lines are in the abstract. Rephrase them
L30: Which CTM?
L36. Delete “representation”
L38: delete “the simulated”
L43: by van Stratum et al. (2022)
L46: CTM, it's already abbreviated
L53: space after the bracket
L53: what do you mean by frequent coupling; there must be a time step for this
L56: by Ding (2013)
L61: “, respectively”
L100: similar to
L104: for this study comes from the
L109: observations or measurements
L111: What is SNELLIUS?
L124: emulate?
Figure 2: The sensor and model levels are different. But can’t you interpolate the model results to the sensor levels?
L211: ”, specifically”
L234-237: agree, but which model results are close to measurements or reasonable?
L244-245: “that must prevail in the impact of …” I do not understand this. Are you talking about the uncertainty of the model results? A bias in the model simulations?
Figure 6: Something is written on the maps, but is too small to read
L274-275: So what were the concluding results from the CHIMERE comparison?
L276: so the ECMWF wind data are not good?
L279, 297: in CTM like
L289-291: rephrase the sentence, hard to follow
Figure 10: “simulated tropospheric column of…”
L305-307: What is the error of tropospheric NO2 from TROPOMI?
L311: high values
Citation: https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2023-1418-RC1 -
AC4: 'Reply on RC1', Andres Yarce Botero, 20 Nov 2023
Dear Editor Slimane Bekki,
I have replied of each one of the Major and Minor comments as this document list
The new version of the paper is attached with the comments for the reviewer (https://docs.google.com/document/d/1I1Derghht13BJNr9f5XvYTn0rxTFn0kvGN_AfCpBVvg/edit?usp=sharing )
Kind regards,
Andres Yarce Botero
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AC5: 'Reply on RC1', Andres Yarce Botero, 20 Nov 2023
Dear Editor Slimane Bekki,
I have replied of each one of the Major and Minor comments as this document list
The new version of the paper is attached with the comments for the reviewer (https://docs.google.com/document/d/1I1Derghht13BJNr9f5XvYTn0rxTFn0kvGN_AfCpBVvg/edit?usp=sharing )
Kind regards,
Andres Yarce Botero
-
AC6: 'Reply on AC5', Andres Yarce Botero, 06 Dec 2023
The comment was uploaded in the form of a supplement: https://egusphere.copernicus.org/preprints/2023/egusphere-2023-1418/egusphere-2023-1418-AC6-supplement.pdf
-
AC6: 'Reply on AC5', Andres Yarce Botero, 06 Dec 2023
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RC2: 'Comment on egusphere-2023-1418', Anonymous Referee #2, 17 Nov 2023
General comments
The manuscript “Investigating the impact of HARMONIE-WINS50 (cy43) and LOTOS-EUROS (v2.2.002) coupling on NO2 concentrations in The Netherlands” by Andres Yarce Botero et al. introduces the chemical transport model LOTOS-EUROS driven by reanalysis meteorological data from HARMONIE and ECMWF at different spatial resolutions. The authors evaluated the impacts of these two meteorological datasets on simulated NO2 concentrations over the North Sea during April 2019. The authors also used some surface observations and satellite retrievals to validate the model performance.
In general, this manuscript fits the scope of the Geoscientific Model Development. However, it does have several drawbacks. The description of the observation datasets used in this study is too brief and lacks sufficient information. The authors should provide more details, such as specifying the TROPOMI dataset and including citations in Section 2. In the results section, the discussion and analysis are ambiguous. The authors included little statistics to validate the model performance and compare the simulated results between the two experiments. It’s not very convincing to only analyze the results at a few time snapshots (Figures 4, 6, and 8). The authors should include more details on the discrepancies between the observed and simulated NO2 concentrations, as well as the factors that contribute to the differences between the two experiments. The uncertainties in air quality simulations driven by the two meteorological datasets have not been quantified. The conclusion of this paper is unclear. It’s not evident whether the use of more precise meteorological data could lead to a more accurate air quality simulation. Additionally, some figures should be re-organized to provide more effective information (Figures 2 and 6). The authors might uniform and enlarge the labels and legends in figures for better readability. Considering these issues, the reviewer recommends publication after major revisions. Please refer to the specific comments and technical corrections listed below.
Specific comments
P2, Line 43: Please add the citation for “HARMONIE cycle 43” or give more description on it.
P6, Table 1: “The variables are divided into static (purple), dynamic two (red), and three dimensions (green)”. Why do you include colors to represent the different variables?
“The variables underlined were calculated with other available variable”. I didn’t see any variables underlined. Please make sure the caption of Table 1.
P5, Line 139: Why did the authors use three nested domains in EC_LE experiment? Why didn’t the authors directly interpolate the original ECMWF meteorology to 0.025 deg and use one domain? I’m wondering how the LOTOS-EUROS runs three nested-domain simulation.
P8-9, Sections 2.3.1 and 2.4: The descriptions on surface NO2 data and TROPOMI data are incomplete. Please give more information including the surface sites you selected, quality control on the raw data, the TROPOMI dataset you used in this study and the citations.
P7, Figure 2: I would suggest the authors to only show the comparison between the observations and ECMWF meteorology data at similar altitudes (e.g. 20 m, 40 m, and 200 m) in Figure 2a. It’s very hard to distinguish the observations and reanalysis data in current figure. Why didn’t the authors add the HARMONIE meteorology data in Figure 2a?
It would be better if the authors can add the altitudes of the sensors, the ECMWF and HARMONIE levels in Figure 2b.
P9-10, Section 3.1: I would suggest the authors to include some statistics such as NMB, RMSE, and correlation coefficients between the observations and ECMWF/HARMONIE meteorology data in the main text. The current analysis is too ambiguous.
P9, Figure 3: Is this the monthly mean daily temperature cycle in April 2019? The symbols and texts in Figure 3 are too small to identify.
P11, Line 204: The relative difference in Figure 5b is defined as “((EC_LE )-(HA_LE ))/(EC_LE)”. But in Line 204, it’s defined as “((EC_LE )-(HA_LE ))/(HA_LE )”. Please clarify it.
P11, Figure 5: Is this the monthly mean surface NO2 concentrations in April 2019? Please clarify this in the caption.
P12, Line 215-226: Why did the authors only compare the simulations with the TROPOMI observations on April 22? I would suggest the authors to do a general comparison during April 2019 and provide more accurate statistics for model validations.
P13, Figure 6: I would suggest the authors to unify the units of tropospheric column of NO2 simulated by two experiments and observed by TROPOMI. Please use the same color bars and add the same map in Figure 3c. I cannot identify which experiment performed better compared to the TROPOMI observations based on current figure.
P12, Line 235-237: “These differences may be attributed to using different meteorological and emission data in the two configurations…”. Why did the authors use different emission data in the two configurations? Based on Table 2, the emission data should be the same in the two experiments.
P12, Line 227-237: I would suggest the authors to provide more informative discussion on the differences of NO2 concentrations and Kz coefficients. I’m wondering what meteorological factors cause the differences of the simulated NO2 concentrations. Why did the authors only analyze the Kz coefficients? Based on Figure 7, it’s hard to say which experiment performed better in simulating NO2 concentrations. Again, I’d like to suggest the authors to quantify the differences between the simulations and the observations.
Technical corrections
P2, Line 43: “… (van Stratum et al., 2022)” should be “… van Stratum et al. (2022)”.
P4, Line 111: Please spell out the acronyms “ECGATE” to “SNELLIUS” when they first appear.
P9, Line 169: Please spell out the acronyms “TROPOMI” and add citations.
P12, Line 232: What’s the Kz coefficient?
P14, Figure 8: Please add (a) and (b) in the upper and lower panels.
P15, Figure 9: Please add (d) in the panel. Please clarify the unit “[m[2] s−1]” of Kz.
Citation: https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2023-1418-RC2 - AC7: 'Reply on RC2', Andres Yarce Botero, 16 Jan 2024
Interactive discussion
Status: closed
-
CEC1: 'Comment on egusphere-2023-1418', Juan Antonio Añel, 06 Oct 2023
Dear authors,Unfortunately, after checking your manuscript, it has come to our attention that it does not comply with our "Code and Data Policy".https://www.geoscientific-model-development.net/policies/code_and_data_policy.htmlYou have archived your code on a Git repository. However, Git repositories are not suitable for scientific publication. You must use other alternatives for long-term archival and publishing when submitting to our journal, as stated in our policy. Therefore, please, publish your code in one of the appropriate repositories, and reply to this comment with the relevant information (link and DOI) as soon as possible, as it should be available before the Discussions stage. Also, currently, to access the Git repository, it is necessary to provide login details. Please, be aware that we do not accept this practice. all the code and data must be publicly available without the need for registration or login.I would like to note that in the repository, you must publish the full codes for the HARMONIE and LOTOS-EUROS versions that you use for the submitted manuscript.Please, note that if you do not fix this problem, we will have to reject your manuscript for publication in our journal. Actually, your manuscript should not have been accepted in Discussions, given this lack of compliance with our policy. Therefore, the current situation with your manuscript is irregular.Also, you must include in a potentially reviewed version of your manuscript the modified 'Code and Data Availability' section, with the DOI of the code and model outputs if applicable.Regards,Juan A. Añel
Geosci. Model Dev. Executive EditorCitation: https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2023-1418-CEC1 -
AC1: 'Reply on CEC1', Andres Yarce Botero, 11 Oct 2023
Dear Editor,
The following is the link for the open access repository where the version of the model used for this publication is deposited
https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.8431342
Sorry for the inconvenience using the git repository
Thanks in advance for your help
Andrés Yarce Botero
Citation: https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2023-1418-AC1 -
CEC2: 'Reply on AC1', Juan Antonio Añel, 11 Oct 2023
Dear authors,
I have checked the new repository for your code, and I have not found in it the HARMONIE input dataset that should be included according to the description (e.g.
/home/boteroay/LOTOS_HARMONIEV2.2002/openle/v2.2/proj/myproj/002/rc/lotos-euros-data-meteo-harmonie.rc) and that is necessary to replicate your work.
Please, double-check it, and if necessary, produce a new version of your Zenodo repository that includes the missing data. Then reply to this comment with he information for the new repository.
Regards,
Juan A. Añel
Geosci. Model Dev. Executive Editor
Citation: https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2023-1418-CEC2 -
AC2: 'Reply on CEC2', Andres Yarce Botero, 11 Oct 2023
Dear Editor,
The input data set is more of the data allowed. Per month its size is 2 Tb. Do you think I should only for example upload one day? just as a test?
Best regards,
Andrés
Citation: https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2023-1418-AC2 -
CEC3: 'Reply on AC2', Juan Antonio Añel, 11 Oct 2023
Dear authors,
First, thanks for your quick reply to this issue. If the total size of the input dataset is an issue, as it seems to be the case, then it would be good that you make explicit how to access it in its current repository. We would expect that, if possible, such a dataset has a DOI, even if it is stored in your "regular" supercomputer. If your datacenter offers such possibility, you should take advantage of it.
If including a test case with the manuscript is possible, it would be good, but only if it is representative of the results obtained.
Best regards,
Juan A. Añel
Geosci. Model Dev. Executive Editor
Citation: https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2023-1418-CEC3 -
AC3: 'Reply on CEC3', Andres Yarce Botero, 12 Oct 2023
Dear Editor
About the first suggestion you gave me, there is not a DOI properly of the dataset, it is saved in the ECMWF (https://www.ecmwf.int/en/computing/access-computing-facilities) cluster in this specific path I can reference ( ec:/nkl/harmonie/WINS50/) . What I feel interesting is that all this datasets are not completely open because at the end you have to be part of a specific group of countries to access the data, in my case the project I work is from Europe and I can access, but If I were for example where I come from, Colombia, without the interaction with somebody from an Europe country I cannot get this data. This is a data widely used of meteorological fields so this discussion of open data make me thing of it and is interesting to me what do you think about it.
About the second option I think is possible, if I upload only one or lets try at least two days of data somebody with the model versions is able to run it.
Thanks for your help and discussion
Andrés Yarce Botero
Citation: https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2023-1418-AC3
-
AC3: 'Reply on CEC3', Andres Yarce Botero, 12 Oct 2023
-
CEC3: 'Reply on AC2', Juan Antonio Añel, 11 Oct 2023
-
AC2: 'Reply on CEC2', Andres Yarce Botero, 11 Oct 2023
-
CEC2: 'Reply on AC1', Juan Antonio Añel, 11 Oct 2023
-
AC1: 'Reply on CEC1', Andres Yarce Botero, 11 Oct 2023
-
RC1: 'Comment on egusphere-2023-1418', Anonymous Referee #1, 31 Oct 2023
Investigating the impact of HARMONIE-WINS50 (cy43) and LOTOS-EUROS (v2.2.002) coupling on NO2 concentrations in The Netherlands by Yarce Botero et al.
This MS deals with the coupling of HARMONIE-WINS50 with LOTOS-EUROS models for air quality simulations. However, some details of the models and coupling process are missing or need to be clarified. The MS needs a major revision before it can be accepted. My comments are given below.
Major
- What is the objective of this paper? Testing the meteorological forcing or the air quality simulation? This is not very clear and should be specified
- Section 2.1, what drives the model, ECMWF, or NWP fields from the other model? In the Introduction, you stated the latter, but here you describe ECMWF!
- Table 2: why there are two meteorological fields in LOTUS –EUROS?
- Why there are large differences between measurements and model results (Figure 7)?
- There are some language problems. Some are listed below, but not complete. Please correct them.
Minor
L25-28: The same lines are in the abstract. Rephrase them
L30: Which CTM?
L36. Delete “representation”
L38: delete “the simulated”
L43: by van Stratum et al. (2022)
L46: CTM, it's already abbreviated
L53: space after the bracket
L53: what do you mean by frequent coupling; there must be a time step for this
L56: by Ding (2013)
L61: “, respectively”
L100: similar to
L104: for this study comes from the
L109: observations or measurements
L111: What is SNELLIUS?
L124: emulate?
Figure 2: The sensor and model levels are different. But can’t you interpolate the model results to the sensor levels?
L211: ”, specifically”
L234-237: agree, but which model results are close to measurements or reasonable?
L244-245: “that must prevail in the impact of …” I do not understand this. Are you talking about the uncertainty of the model results? A bias in the model simulations?
Figure 6: Something is written on the maps, but is too small to read
L274-275: So what were the concluding results from the CHIMERE comparison?
L276: so the ECMWF wind data are not good?
L279, 297: in CTM like
L289-291: rephrase the sentence, hard to follow
Figure 10: “simulated tropospheric column of…”
L305-307: What is the error of tropospheric NO2 from TROPOMI?
L311: high values
Citation: https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2023-1418-RC1 -
AC4: 'Reply on RC1', Andres Yarce Botero, 20 Nov 2023
Dear Editor Slimane Bekki,
I have replied of each one of the Major and Minor comments as this document list
The new version of the paper is attached with the comments for the reviewer (https://docs.google.com/document/d/1I1Derghht13BJNr9f5XvYTn0rxTFn0kvGN_AfCpBVvg/edit?usp=sharing )
Kind regards,
Andres Yarce Botero
-
AC5: 'Reply on RC1', Andres Yarce Botero, 20 Nov 2023
Dear Editor Slimane Bekki,
I have replied of each one of the Major and Minor comments as this document list
The new version of the paper is attached with the comments for the reviewer (https://docs.google.com/document/d/1I1Derghht13BJNr9f5XvYTn0rxTFn0kvGN_AfCpBVvg/edit?usp=sharing )
Kind regards,
Andres Yarce Botero
-
AC6: 'Reply on AC5', Andres Yarce Botero, 06 Dec 2023
The comment was uploaded in the form of a supplement: https://egusphere.copernicus.org/preprints/2023/egusphere-2023-1418/egusphere-2023-1418-AC6-supplement.pdf
-
AC6: 'Reply on AC5', Andres Yarce Botero, 06 Dec 2023
-
RC2: 'Comment on egusphere-2023-1418', Anonymous Referee #2, 17 Nov 2023
General comments
The manuscript “Investigating the impact of HARMONIE-WINS50 (cy43) and LOTOS-EUROS (v2.2.002) coupling on NO2 concentrations in The Netherlands” by Andres Yarce Botero et al. introduces the chemical transport model LOTOS-EUROS driven by reanalysis meteorological data from HARMONIE and ECMWF at different spatial resolutions. The authors evaluated the impacts of these two meteorological datasets on simulated NO2 concentrations over the North Sea during April 2019. The authors also used some surface observations and satellite retrievals to validate the model performance.
In general, this manuscript fits the scope of the Geoscientific Model Development. However, it does have several drawbacks. The description of the observation datasets used in this study is too brief and lacks sufficient information. The authors should provide more details, such as specifying the TROPOMI dataset and including citations in Section 2. In the results section, the discussion and analysis are ambiguous. The authors included little statistics to validate the model performance and compare the simulated results between the two experiments. It’s not very convincing to only analyze the results at a few time snapshots (Figures 4, 6, and 8). The authors should include more details on the discrepancies between the observed and simulated NO2 concentrations, as well as the factors that contribute to the differences between the two experiments. The uncertainties in air quality simulations driven by the two meteorological datasets have not been quantified. The conclusion of this paper is unclear. It’s not evident whether the use of more precise meteorological data could lead to a more accurate air quality simulation. Additionally, some figures should be re-organized to provide more effective information (Figures 2 and 6). The authors might uniform and enlarge the labels and legends in figures for better readability. Considering these issues, the reviewer recommends publication after major revisions. Please refer to the specific comments and technical corrections listed below.
Specific comments
P2, Line 43: Please add the citation for “HARMONIE cycle 43” or give more description on it.
P6, Table 1: “The variables are divided into static (purple), dynamic two (red), and three dimensions (green)”. Why do you include colors to represent the different variables?
“The variables underlined were calculated with other available variable”. I didn’t see any variables underlined. Please make sure the caption of Table 1.
P5, Line 139: Why did the authors use three nested domains in EC_LE experiment? Why didn’t the authors directly interpolate the original ECMWF meteorology to 0.025 deg and use one domain? I’m wondering how the LOTOS-EUROS runs three nested-domain simulation.
P8-9, Sections 2.3.1 and 2.4: The descriptions on surface NO2 data and TROPOMI data are incomplete. Please give more information including the surface sites you selected, quality control on the raw data, the TROPOMI dataset you used in this study and the citations.
P7, Figure 2: I would suggest the authors to only show the comparison between the observations and ECMWF meteorology data at similar altitudes (e.g. 20 m, 40 m, and 200 m) in Figure 2a. It’s very hard to distinguish the observations and reanalysis data in current figure. Why didn’t the authors add the HARMONIE meteorology data in Figure 2a?
It would be better if the authors can add the altitudes of the sensors, the ECMWF and HARMONIE levels in Figure 2b.
P9-10, Section 3.1: I would suggest the authors to include some statistics such as NMB, RMSE, and correlation coefficients between the observations and ECMWF/HARMONIE meteorology data in the main text. The current analysis is too ambiguous.
P9, Figure 3: Is this the monthly mean daily temperature cycle in April 2019? The symbols and texts in Figure 3 are too small to identify.
P11, Line 204: The relative difference in Figure 5b is defined as “((EC_LE )-(HA_LE ))/(EC_LE)”. But in Line 204, it’s defined as “((EC_LE )-(HA_LE ))/(HA_LE )”. Please clarify it.
P11, Figure 5: Is this the monthly mean surface NO2 concentrations in April 2019? Please clarify this in the caption.
P12, Line 215-226: Why did the authors only compare the simulations with the TROPOMI observations on April 22? I would suggest the authors to do a general comparison during April 2019 and provide more accurate statistics for model validations.
P13, Figure 6: I would suggest the authors to unify the units of tropospheric column of NO2 simulated by two experiments and observed by TROPOMI. Please use the same color bars and add the same map in Figure 3c. I cannot identify which experiment performed better compared to the TROPOMI observations based on current figure.
P12, Line 235-237: “These differences may be attributed to using different meteorological and emission data in the two configurations…”. Why did the authors use different emission data in the two configurations? Based on Table 2, the emission data should be the same in the two experiments.
P12, Line 227-237: I would suggest the authors to provide more informative discussion on the differences of NO2 concentrations and Kz coefficients. I’m wondering what meteorological factors cause the differences of the simulated NO2 concentrations. Why did the authors only analyze the Kz coefficients? Based on Figure 7, it’s hard to say which experiment performed better in simulating NO2 concentrations. Again, I’d like to suggest the authors to quantify the differences between the simulations and the observations.
Technical corrections
P2, Line 43: “… (van Stratum et al., 2022)” should be “… van Stratum et al. (2022)”.
P4, Line 111: Please spell out the acronyms “ECGATE” to “SNELLIUS” when they first appear.
P9, Line 169: Please spell out the acronyms “TROPOMI” and add citations.
P12, Line 232: What’s the Kz coefficient?
P14, Figure 8: Please add (a) and (b) in the upper and lower panels.
P15, Figure 9: Please add (d) in the panel. Please clarify the unit “[m[2] s−1]” of Kz.
Citation: https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2023-1418-RC2 - AC7: 'Reply on RC2', Andres Yarce Botero, 16 Jan 2024
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Andres Yarce Botero
Michiel van Weele
Arjo Segers
Pier Siebesma
Henk Eskes
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