the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
| 07 Jan 2026
A Comparative Study of Mesospheric Zonal Wind Observations from Na Lidar and Multistatic Meteor Radars above Hefei, China
Abstract. This study compares zonal wind measurements from a Na lidar at the University of Science and Technology of China (USTC) with those from the multistatic meteor radar system near Hefei, China. The meteor radar data used for comparison with the lidar include three sources: Mengcheng Meteor Radar (MCMR), Changfeng remote Receiver (CFR), and wind derived closer to the lidar beam using the Volume Velocity Processing (VVP) method. Simultaneous hourly observations over 34 nights from 2022 to 2023, spanning about 300 hours between 82 and 98 km, were analyzed. The parameters of zonal wind between lidar and meteor radar such as correlation coefficients, zonal wind mean, variance and zonal wind different are presented. Both monostatic meteor radar (MCMR and CFR) and multistatic meteor radars (VVP) zonal winds show good consistency with lidar zonal winds. Compared with monostatic radars, VVP zonal winds exhibit better agreement with the lidar above 90 km, both in zonal wind variance and radar-to-lidar zonal wind ratio. These results demonstrate that the VVP method provides a reliable approach for retrieving meteor radar winds and can improve wind estimates in the 90–98 km region.
Competing interests: Author Wen Yi is a member of the editorial board of AMT but was not involved in the review process or editorial decision for this manuscript.
Publisher's note: Copernicus Publications remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims made in the text, published maps, institutional affiliations, or any other geographical representation in this paper. While Copernicus Publications makes every effort to include appropriate place names, the final responsibility lies with the authors. Views expressed in the text are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher.- Preprint
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Status: open (until 11 Feb 2026)
- RC1: 'Comment on egusphere-2025-5519', Anonymous Referee #2, 23 Jan 2026 reply
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RC2: 'Comment on egusphere-2025-5519', Anonymous Referee #1, 24 Jan 2026
reply
This work is to compare the horizontal winds measurements by a Na Doppler lidar and Meteor Wind Radars nearby. In addition to traditional approach for radar data analysis, the authors utilized the Volume Velocity Processing (VVP) method to derive the radar measured horizontal winds, which generated results that are more consistent with the lidar observations. This is an important investigation demonstrating the robust and reliable VVP approach for meteor radar wind observations. I only have a few technical issues with the manuscript.
1. The author should highlight/emphasize (in the abstract and introduction) the 300 hours utilized in this study is when all instruments (two MWRs and the Na lidar) were all simultaneously operating.
2. The author should present the measurement uncertainties for both lidar and radar systems, especially the uncertainty limit for data selections in the introduction. I think those blank areas in Figure 3 are due to large measurement uncertainty, and the paper should describe how the criteria is decided.
3. It may be helpful for the readers if the error bars can be added in Figure 4.
4. In this Discussion, the author does not explain clearly why the VVP winds are more consistent with the Na lidar winds above 90 km. I think it is an important point of discussion, because VVP is used in various radar stations around the globe. The VVP clearly takes advantage of more radar echo signals, but why this only affects winds above 90 km? Is this somehow related to the different dynamics below and above this altitude?
5. Line 137, suggest replacing "structure" with "temporal and vertical variations"
6. Line 180, suggest replacing "high" with "large"
Citation: https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2025-5519-RC2
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This manuscript compares zonal wind measurements from a Na lidar and at the multi-static meteor radar system configured with Mengcheng Meteor Radar and Changfeng remote Receiver near Hefei, China. The meteor radar data used for comparison include Mengcheng Meteor Radar (MCMR), Changfeng remote Receiver (CFR), and wind derived closer to the lidar beam using the Volume Velocity Processing (VVP) method. The results demonstrate that MCMR, CFR and VVP zonal winds show good consistency with lidar zonal winds. Meanwhile VVP zonal winds exhibit better agreement with the lidar above 90 km, both in zonal wind variance and radar-to-lidar zonal wind ratio, suggesting that the VVP method provides a reliable approach for retrieving meteor radar winds and can improve wind estimates in the 90–98 km region.
I have some comments as follows:
1. Line 85-86: better revised to “…The zonal wind uncertainties for resolutions of 1 hour and 2 km range from...”. It is better to describe the uncertainties of zonal wind than line-of-sight accuracies in current manuscript.
2. Line 113: “…from Na lidar and hourly meteor counts from meteor radars.”
3. Line 115: “…profiles of Na density and meteor counts both exhibit Gaussian distributions.”
4. Line 119: “…The peak altitude of CFR detection is 1 km higher than that of MCMR”
5. Line 136-137: “Figure 3 demonstrates the zonal wind observations from (a) Na lidar, (b) MCMR, (c) CFR, and (d) VVP between 12:00 and 21:00 UT on February 26, 2023 which exhibit good consistency in overall structure.”
6. Line 161-162: “These histograms generally exhibit Gaussian distributions.”