On the relationship between responses in cloud water and precipitation to changes in aerosol

Lebo, Z. J.; Feingold, G.

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-14-11817-2014

Articles | Volume 14, issue 21

https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-14-11817-2014

© Author(s) 2014. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-14-11817-2014

© Author(s) 2014. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.

Articles | Volume 14, issue 21

Research article

|

11 Nov 2014

Research article |

| 11 Nov 2014

On the relationship between responses in cloud water and precipitation to changes in aerosol

Z. J. Lebo and G. Feingold

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Final revised paper (published on 11 Nov 2014)
Preprint (discussion started on 22 May 2014)

Interactive discussion

Status: closed

AC: Author comment | RC: Referee comment | SC: Short comment | EC: Editor comment

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- Supplement

RC C3865: 'case study with limited implication', Anonymous Referee #1, 20 Jun 2014
- AC C6094: 'Responses to Comments from Reviewer 1', Zachary Lebo, 20 Aug 2014
RC C5150: 'referee comment', Anonymous Referee #2, 21 Jul 2014
- AC C6095: 'Responses to Comments from Reviewer 2', Zachary Lebo, 20 Aug 2014

Peer-review completion

AR: Author's response | RR: Referee report | ED: Editor decision

AR by Zachary Lebo on behalf of the Authors (20 Aug 2014) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Referee Nomination & Report Request started (28 Aug 2014) by Corinna Hoose

RR by Anonymous Referee #2 (28 Aug 2014)

RR by Anonymous Referee #1 (16 Sep 2014)

Suggestions for revision or reasons for rejection

I went through the authors’s reply to my comments and the revised manuscript. I appreciated the authors’ efforts on addressing my comments. Some of my comments have been adequately addressed, but others are needed to be further addressed, as I detailed below:

Major comment #3: The use of various Th in the manuscript is not just used to demonstrate how the analysis changes as a function of the chosen rain rate threshold, but is also used to draw some conclusions listed in Section 4, for example the asymptotic behaviors at sufficient large Spop, which is mainly from results at Th=0.001 mm/day. So this bears the question that which Th is more appropriate. What is more, if all these Th are not equally realistic, it makes little sense to examine how the different Th might influence the results. So it is important to discuss which threshold may be more important. Also, when a conclusion is drawn in Section 4, it needs to make clear which Th is used.

Specific comments:
4). Here we are talking about change in lameta, the percent change in LWP from doubling aerosol loading. It is irrelevant whether this can be easily discerned with satellite observations or not.

10). Though LES has no “cloud fraction” for its individual grids, it has cloud fraction if we consider the whole LES domain. That is where cloud fraction comes from in my original comment.

11). How POP is calculated in Wang et al. (2012) is clearly described in L’Ecuyer et al. (2009). It is my understanding that POP is calculated differently in this study from L’Ecuyer et al. (2009), as I detailed in my original comment. I do not think the “self-consistent” is sufficient here. As the authors compare this study with Wang et al. (2012), it is important to keep the methodology consistent. Even if the authors can not keep them the same, the reason behind this and its implication for the comparison between two studies need to be discussed.

13). I appreciated that Spop-lameta relationship from Wang et al. (2012) is now removed from Figure 1. The first sentence in Section 3.1 about Spop is now irrelevant (and the probably the Spop in the second sentence as well).

16). But this asymptotic behavior is now a major conclusion in Section 4, though this asymptotic behavior is mainly found with Th=0.001 mm/day.

17). I understand that the authors can not get Spop for other Ths. But that is the point, so Spop derived from satellite with zero dBZ radar reflectivity can not be used with Th=0.001 or Th=5.0 mm/day. That is just wrong. The same is also applied to comment #19 and #24.

23). The discussion about Wang et al. (2012) is still not satisfactory. I still think the discussion there is confusing and can be even misleading. The authors need to keep in mind that the relationship derived in Wang et al. (2012) is only applicable to all cloud types over global ocean, while the case this study examined is RICO. This difference needs to be reflected in the discussion.

26). The non-zero intercept. It is still not clear to me how RICO case shows the positive intercept. Also, what is the physical reason for a lameta likely larger than 0? What is more, the comparison between this study and Wang et al. (2012) here is not appropriate, as I documented in my original major comments #1 that these two studies look at a quite different cloud population.

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ED: Reconsider after minor revisions (Editor review) (16 Sep 2014) by Corinna Hoose

AR by Zachary Lebo on behalf of the Authors (22 Sep 2014) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Publish as is (23 Sep 2014) by Corinna Hoose

AR by Zachary Lebo on behalf of the Authors (29 Sep 2014)