Comment on acp-2022-732

Abstract

<strong class="journal-contentHeaderColor">Abstract.</strong> A statistical validation campaign of Aeolus L2B wind products has been performed with a ground-based Doppler lidar system and radiosondes at the ACTRIS/AGORA facility in Granada (Spain). The validation activities with the automatic ground-based lidar system lasted from the release of the reprocessed Aeolus data to the orbit shift of June 2021. This validation was performed using 109 B10 and B11 Aeolus products (within 100 km around the station) and 30-min averages of coincident ground-based lidar measurements (mean bin distance of ~50 km). The comparison yielded an approximately equal overestimation and underestimation of Aeolus HLOS wind speed during that period for the Rayleigh clear and Mie cloudy configurations. However, the reliability of the results was constrained to Aeolus&rsquo; lowermost bins (roughly up to 3.5 km asl), due to the limited vertical coverage of the ground-based lidar measurements. Several spin-off analyses were performed varying the maximum distance to consider an Aeolus bin into the comparison and the average of the ground-based lidar measurements, in order to confirm the reliability of the criteria considered. An additional study was performed with Aeolus products after the orbit shift (B12 with a mean bin distance of ~75 km). A set of 7 radiosondes were launched between June 2021 and July 2022 (B12, mean bin distance of ~75 km) aiming to increase their coincidence in space and time with the satellite overpass (~30 minutes before). The radiosondes could provide full vertical coverage of Aeolus profiles (from surface up to ~20 km asl) and the comparison yielded that the Rayleigh clear HLOS wind speed presented an approximately equal overestimation and underestimation, while the Mie cloudy HLOS wind speed was significantly overestimated. Spin-off analyses were performed in order to test how the spatiotemporal colocation of the radiosonde affected the results.