Impact of environmental moisture on tropical cyclone intensification

Wu, L.; Su, H.; Fovell, R. G.; Dunkerton, T. J.; Wang, Z.; Kahn, B. H.

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-15-14041-2015

Articles | Volume 15, issue 24

https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-15-14041-2015

© Author(s) 2015. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-15-14041-2015

© Author(s) 2015. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.

Articles | Volume 15, issue 24

Research article

|

21 Dec 2015

Research article |

| 21 Dec 2015

Impact of environmental moisture on tropical cyclone intensification

L. Wu, H. Su, R. G. Fovell, T. J. Dunkerton, Z. Wang, and B. H. Kahn

Download

Final revised paper (published on 21 Dec 2015)
Supplement to the final revised paper
Preprint (discussion started on 15 Jun 2015)

Interactive discussion

Status: closed

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

- Printer-friendly version

- Supplement

RC C3722: 'See attached PDF', Anonymous Referee #2, 15 Jun 2015
- AC C6680: 'response to referee #2', Longtao Wu, 08 Sep 2015
RC C4777: 'Review of Wu et al. (2015)', Anonymous Referee #1, 12 Jul 2015
- AC C6679: 'response to referee #1', Longtao Wu, 08 Sep 2015

Peer-review completion

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

AR by Longtao Wu on behalf of the Authors (08 Sep 2015) Manuscript

ED: Referee Nomination & Report Request started (13 Sep 2015) by Fangqun Yu

RR by Anonymous Referee #1 (04 Oct 2015)

RR by Anonymous Referee #2 (13 Oct 2015)

Suggestions for revision or reasons for rejection

My two main concerns with the simulations presented in this paper are that 1) much of the evolution is still in the adjustment and pinup time, and 2) the moisture perturbation are highly unrealistic, so much so that they initiate large areas of new convection and then new circulations around the storm. The authors did do some extra simulations starting 12 hours earlier, and found that the results were similar. But then, why not use those simulations? And why not use less extreme moisture perturbations, which would be more representative of the natural variability in the atmosphere? The answer may be that localized moisture perturbations of more modest amplitude and structure have very little effect, and indeed that seems to be one of hte conclusions.

The authors note that the perturbations were inspired by Shu and Wu (2009) and Wu et al. (2012). Those papers did not find enormous rectangular moisture anomalies with 20% RH discontinuities on the edges. For the MF case, it would be pretty easy to fill in the lower RH region in the front-right of the storm (blue colors) just up to the values around it (i.e., turn all the blues into green). If realistic or modest perturbations have little effect, then it is reasonable to crank up the values to see what it takes to make a difference.

I am sure some of the authors will see my comments as unreasonable but I feel the field of TC simulation research has evolved to the point where taking a simulation, adding some extreme anomaly, and then interpreting the outcomes to say "results depend on where you put the anomalies" no longer qualifies as worthy of publication. I am sure the authors are all good scientists and they have the tools to do research that would make a more distinct contribution so I hope they will take this work to a higher level.

Hide

ED: Reconsider after major revisions (16 Oct 2015) by Fangqun Yu

AR by Longtao Wu on behalf of the Authors (16 Nov 2015) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Referee Nomination & Report Request started (20 Nov 2015) by Fangqun Yu

RR by Anonymous Referee #1 (07 Dec 2015)

ED: Publish as is (07 Dec 2015) by Fangqun Yu

AR by Longtao Wu on behalf of the Authors (08 Dec 2015)

Download

Article (7581 KB)
Full-text XML