Shortwave direct radiative effects of above-cloud aerosols over global  oceans derived from 8 years of CALIOP and MODIS observations

Zhang, Zhibo; Meyer, Kerry; Yu, Hongbin; Platnick, Steven; Colarco, Peter; Liu, Zhaoyan; Oreopoulos, Lazaros

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-16-2877-2016

Articles | Volume 16, issue 5

https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-16-2877-2016

© Author(s) 2016. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-16-2877-2016

© Author(s) 2016. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.

Articles | Volume 16, issue 5

Research article

|

04 Mar 2016

Research article |

| 04 Mar 2016

Shortwave direct radiative effects of above-cloud aerosols over global oceans derived from 8 years of CALIOP and MODIS observations

Zhibo Zhang, Kerry Meyer, Hongbin Yu, Steven Platnick, Peter Colarco, Zhaoyan Liu, and Lazaros Oreopoulos

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Final revised paper (published on 04 Mar 2016)
Supplement to the final revised paper
Preprint (discussion started on 29 Sep 2015)
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Interactive discussion

Status: closed

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

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- Supplement

RC C8708: 'Review of Shortwave direct radiative effect etc. by Z. Zhang etal', Anonymous Referee #1, 30 Oct 2015
- AC C10933: 'Reply To Anonymous Referee #1', Zhibo Zhang, 29 Dec 2015
RC C9693: 'Review of “Shortwave direct radiative effects of above cloud aerosols over global oceans derived from eight years of CALIOP and MODIS observations” by Zhang et al.', Anonymous Referee #2, 24 Nov 2015
- AC C10938: 'Reply to Anonymous Referee #2', Zhibo Zhang, 29 Dec 2015

Peer-review completion

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

AR by Zhibo Zhang on behalf of the Authors (29 Dec 2015)

ED: Reconsider after minor revisions (Editor review) (02 Feb 2016) by Philip Stier

Dear Authors

Thank you for providing the revised manuscript “Shortwave Direct Radiative Effects of Above Cloud Aerosols Over Global Oceans Derived From Eight Years of CALIOP and MODIS Observations” as well as your responses to the issues raised during the reviews.

Based on the reviewer’s comments and my own assessment I have concluded to reconsider your manuscript for publication in Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics after minor revisions.

While I concur with the reviewer’s concerns that it is problematic to ignore the cloud (and potentially aerosol) diurnal cycle, I accept your response that this is clearly stated in this manuscript and subject to future work. I should add that while you argue that suitable measurements to constrain the diurnal cycle are not available and specifically that the EUMETSAT MSG SEVIRI diurnal cycle product is only available for monthly means: this may be true but the MSG SEVIRI cloud retrievals are in fact available at 15-minute time resolution (not just as the monthly diurnal cycle product) so this is not an impossible task.

Most of the reviewer’s comments have been resolved in your response; however, I would kindly ask you to address one remaining issue: could you please discuss the implications of potential cloud / aerosol misidentifications in the uncertainty estimate? In particular in the Saharan outflow region, the aerosol/cloud masking procedure is subject to considerable uncertainty (which could bias the analysis through assumption of a scene containing aerosol over cloud while it may be simply aerosol (from CALIOP) above aerosol (from MODIS but misidentified as cloud and therefore also assumed to have different radiative properties).

I am looking forward to your revised manuscript.

Kind regards,

Philip Stier
Co-Editor
Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics

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AR by Zhibo Zhang on behalf of the Authors (11 Feb 2016) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Publish as is (11 Feb 2016) by Philip Stier

AR by Zhibo Zhang on behalf of the Authors (23 Feb 2016)

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Short summary

The frequency of occurrence and shortwave direct radiative effects (DRE) of above-cloud aerosols (ACAs) over global oceans are investigated using 8 years of collocated CALIOP and MODIS observations. We estimated that ACAs have a global ocean annual mean diurnally averaged cloudy-sky DRE of 0.015 W m⁻² (range of −0.03 to 0.06 W m⁻²) at TOA. The DREs at surface and within atmosphere are −0.15 W m⁻² (range of −0.09 to −0.21 W m⁻²), and 0.17 W m⁻² (range of 0.11 to 0.24 W m⁻²), respectively.