How important are atmospheric depressions and mobile cyclones for emitting mineral dust aerosol in North Africa?

Fiedler, S.; Schepanski, K.; Knippertz, P.; Heinold, B.; Tegen, I.

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-14-8983-2014

Articles | Volume 14, issue 17

https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-14-8983-2014

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

https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-14-8983-2014

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

Articles | Volume 14, issue 17

Research article

|

01 Sep 2014

Research article |

| 01 Sep 2014

How important are atmospheric depressions and mobile cyclones for emitting mineral dust aerosol in North Africa?

S. Fiedler, K. Schepanski, P. Knippertz, B. Heinold, and I. Tegen

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Final revised paper (published on 01 Sep 2014)
Preprint (discussion started on 10 Dec 2013)

Interactive discussion

Status: closed

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

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- Supplement

RC C12103: 'Review', Anonymous Referee #1, 11 Feb 2014
- AC C13288: 'Response to reviewer 1', Stephanie Fiedler, 02 Apr 2014
RC C12292: 'Review of Fiedler et al.', Anonymous Referee #2, 15 Feb 2014
- AC C13289: 'Response to reviewer 2', Stephanie Fiedler, 02 Apr 2014

Peer-review completion

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

AR by Stephanie Fiedler on behalf of the Authors (02 Apr 2014) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Referee Nomination & Report Request started (24 Apr 2014) by Heini Wernli

RR by Anonymous Referee #1 (30 May 2014)

Suggestions for revision or reasons for rejection

Second review of the article “How important are cyclones for mineral dust emission in North Africa?” by Fiedler et al.

After the revision of the authors, the interest and quality of the article have been significantly improved, however some points raised in the first revision are still confusing and do not allow the acceptance of the article.

The first issue already raised in the first replay correspond to the causal links. I noted some corrections of the authors but to better attribute these origins to the large scale forcings it would be interesting, for example, to study the temporal evolution of the dust emission each year (in connection with Figure 3). This would determine whether aerosols emissions by cyclones are linked to their occurrences. This is probably one of the major advances that could proposed this article

The second part of the comment (1st comment major and 6th minor) was the absence of the influence of the intensity of depression. In the article, it is shown that depression often occur, especially during the months of June July and August. Thus the contribution of depression in accumulated emissions appears strong. The question of intensity would answer if this contribution is related to regular emissions almost every day or explained by some events events especially strong.
For example, in Figure 8, how the authors interpret the results? Is it regular emissions once the depression is detected?

About the second major comment, I do not understand why it is not possible to use satellite images to determine if there is presence of convective system or not during the dust emissions. Given the large number of articles showing the importance of convection on the dust emission, I suggest to take into account this characteristic.

Figure 15 (before 14a), I still do not understand the contribution of this figure without information about emissions that occur in the same areas but without the presence of cyclones. It will investigate whether this cycle is explained by a change in cyclone characteristic or by a characteristic of the region concerned.

After complete reading of the article including new corrections it appears also several minor comments:
Please note that the review was done on the document with corrections recorded.

L662: "Figure 7 shows the annual mean ..." This is not clear in relation to the caption of the figure.

L705 "For instance a large ..." Please see comments to the main comment and in Figure 8 discussed previously.

Figure 5: Is it necessary to show this figure?

Figure 7: How this frequency is calculated?

Figure 9: I note differences with the figure of the previous version. Are these data have been modified ?

Figure 10: The orography obstruct the map and in Figure 10b, it is difficult to determine the area embedded by the blue contours.

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RR by Anonymous Referee #2 (12 Jun 2014)

ED: Reconsider after minor revisions (Editor review) (19 Jun 2014) by Heini Wernli

AR by Stephanie Fiedler on behalf of the Authors (04 Jul 2014) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Publish subject to technical corrections (11 Jul 2014) by Heini Wernli

AR by Stephanie Fiedler on behalf of the Authors (24 Jul 2014) Author's response Manuscript