Convective sources of trajectories traversing the tropical tropopause layer

Tissier, Ann-Sophie; Legras, Bernard

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-16-3383-2016

Articles | Volume 16, issue 5

https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-16-3383-2016

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

Special issue:

StratoClim stratospheric and upper tropospheric processes...

https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-16-3383-2016

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

Articles | Volume 16, issue 5

Research article

|

15 Mar 2016

Research article |

| 15 Mar 2016

Convective sources of trajectories traversing the tropical tropopause layer

Ann-Sophie Tissier and Bernard Legras

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Final revised paper (published on 15 Mar 2016)
Supplement to the final revised paper
Preprint (discussion started on 25 Sep 2015)

Interactive discussion

Status: closed

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

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- Supplement

RC C9188: 'Review of Tissier and Legras (Transport across the TTL and convection', Anonymous Referee #1, 11 Nov 2015
- AC C10714: 'Author Comment to Referee 1', Ann-Sophie Tissier, 21 Dec 2015
RC C9738: 'Review of “Transport across the tropical tropopause layer and convection”, by A.-S. Tissier and B. Legras', Anonymous Referee #2, 25 Nov 2015
- AC C10720: 'Author Comment to Referee 2', Ann-Sophie Tissier, 21 Dec 2015

Peer-review completion

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

AR by Ann-Sophie Tissier on behalf of the Authors (21 Dec 2015) Author's response

ED: Referee Nomination & Report Request started (07 Jan 2016) by Peter Haynes

RR by Anonymous Referee #2 (19 Jan 2016)

Suggestions for revision or reasons for rejection

Review of the revised submission “Convective sources of trajectories traversing the tropical tropopause layer” by A.-S. Tissier and B. Legras

The clarity and focus of this revised manuscript are substantially improved relative to the initial submission, and the authors have adequately addressed my concerns. I recommend acceptance following minor technical corrections and look forward to the promised follow-up on horizontal displacements.

General technical comments:
1. Since the focus is on the global tropics, usage of “summer” and “winter” should specify “boreal” (or equivalent) for clarity, either universally or at first use (there currently only seems to be one instance, and that in the summary).

2. I still don’t understand the rationale behind the labels of the y-axes in Figures 3, 5, 7 and 8, “Source θ” — aren’t these estimates of daily number density in potential temperature space (hence the unit K**–1 day**–1)? I recommend either clarifying the origin of these labels or replacing them with something clearer (e.g., "Number density").

Specific technical comments:
p.7, l.24: remove floating “is”

p.11, l.4: suggest specifying “estimates of transit times” to clarify that this sentence is not regarding actual (real-world) transit times

p.12, first paragraph: are these lower cutoffs independent of the requirement that Tb ≤ 230 K?

p.14, l.22: suggest removing “the couple”

p.17, l.5: typo: “mean” → “means”

p.18, l.16: typo: “provides” → “provide”

p.18, l.25: for clarity of meaning, suggest changing “makes” → “constitutes”

p.19, l.7: suggest “are in-mixed in” → “mix into”

p.19, l.13: probably typo: “whose”, which makes the intended meaning of this sentence unclear.

p.19:, l.24: suggest “74.5% — a proportion in line with the fractional surface area of the oceans in the region 40°S–40°N.”

p.19, l.28: “environment” → “environmental” or “ambient environmental”

p.20, l.23: typo: “ans” → “and”

p.21, l.8: “short and elusive” → “transient”?

p.21, l.14: should specify that this shift is in the vertical location in potential temperature space

p.22, l.6: “notice” → “note”

p.22, l.26 to p.23, l.2: suggest combining this paragraph with the previous one, as it deals with the same theme

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RR by Anonymous Referee #1 (21 Jan 2016)

ED: Reconsider after minor revisions (Editor review) (30 Jan 2016) by Peter Haynes

AR by Ann-Sophie Tissier on behalf of the Authors (09 Feb 2016) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Publish subject to technical corrections (26 Feb 2016) by Peter Haynes

AR by Ann-Sophie Tissier on behalf of the Authors (01 Mar 2016) Manuscript

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Short summary

Transit properties across the TTL are studied using forward and backward Lagrangian trajectories between cloud tops and the reference surface 380 K. The tropical domain is subdivided into 11 subregions according to the distribution of land and convection. Due to the good agreement between forward and backward statistics, we estimate the contribution of each region to the upward mass flux across the 380 K surface, the vertical distribution of convective sources and of transit times over 2005–2008.