Phase transition observations and discrimination of small cloud particles by light polarization in expansion chamber experiments

Nichman, Leonid; Fuchs, Claudia; Järvinen, Emma; Ignatius, Karoliina; Höppel, Niko Florian; Dias, Antonio; Heinritzi, Martin; Simon, Mario; Tröstl, Jasmin; Wagner, Andrea Christine; Wagner, Robert; Williamson, Christina; Yan, Chao; Connolly, Paul James; Dorsey, James Robert; Duplissy, Jonathan; Ehrhart, Sebastian; Frege, Carla; Gordon, Hamish; Hoyle, Christopher Robert; Kristensen, Thomas Bjerring; Steiner, Gerhard; McPherson Donahue, Neil; Flagan, Richard; Gallagher, Martin William; Kirkby, Jasper; Möhler, Ottmar; Saathoff, Harald; Schnaiter, Martin; Stratmann, Frank; Tomé, António

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-16-3651-2016

Articles | Volume 16, issue 5

https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-16-3651-2016

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

Special issue:

The CERN CLOUD experiment (ACP/AMT inter-journal SI)

https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-16-3651-2016

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

Articles | Volume 16, issue 5

Research article

|

17 Mar 2016

Research article |

| 17 Mar 2016

Phase transition observations and discrimination of small cloud particles by light polarization in expansion chamber experiments

Leonid Nichman, Claudia Fuchs, Emma Järvinen, Karoliina Ignatius, Niko Florian Höppel, Antonio Dias, Martin Heinritzi, Mario Simon, Jasmin Tröstl, Andrea Christine Wagner, Robert Wagner, Christina Williamson, Chao Yan, Paul James Connolly, James Robert Dorsey, Jonathan Duplissy, Sebastian Ehrhart, Carla Frege, Hamish Gordon, Christopher Robert Hoyle, Thomas Bjerring Kristensen, Gerhard Steiner, Neil McPherson Donahue, Richard Flagan, Martin William Gallagher, Jasper Kirkby, Ottmar Möhler, Harald Saathoff, Martin Schnaiter, Frank Stratmann, and António Tomé

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Status: closed

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

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RC C9923: 'Referee Comment, L. Nichman et al.', Anonymous Referee #1, 30 Nov 2015
RC C11081: 'Referee comment', Anonymous Referee #2, 04 Jan 2016
AC C11789: 'Authors final response to anonymous referee #1 and #2', Leonid Nichman, 20 Jan 2016

Peer-review completion

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

AR by Leonid Nichman on behalf of the Authors (03 Feb 2016) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Referee Nomination & Report Request started (04 Feb 2016) by Veli-Matti Kerminen

RR by Anonymous Referee #1 (22 Feb 2016)

Suggestions for revision or reasons for rejection

Technical suggestions:
Manuscript locations are given by page.line number.

2.15 According to publisher house standards, acronyms and abbreviations should given separately in the abstract and main body of the text. So 'GCM' does not need to be defined here as it is not used again in the abstract.
3.2 Ditto 'TTL'.
3.4 Either include an 'a' here, ie "...leading to a net radiative effect that either cools or warms..." or make effect the plural (which may not make sense given it is a net effect which may be only singular?).
3.24 Make plural, ie "The hygroscopicity of organic particles is derived..."
3.29-33 There is some confusion about the definition of 'viscous' in these sentences. At first reading, it appeared as if the sentence "The(se) viscous SOA..." referred to particles defined in the previous sentence as "...semi-solid and solid amorphous states...". However in 3.33 it appears as if viscous particles may be amorphous or otherwise (as amorphous particles are a subset of viscous particles). These couple of sentences should be tidied up so that the definition of 'viscous' is clear.
4.8 "...it's derivatives in SOA..." is this supposed to mean SOAs derived from alpha-pinene? Rephrase for clarity.
4.27 "This addition..." probably refers to the additional experiments in 4.25 however the intervening sentence makes this unclear. Suggest moving the sentence before the "In this paper..." sentence or rephrasing.
5.11 There are two undefined acronyms here. Add a registered trademark to TSI so it is clear that this is the company. Spell out DMA as this acronym is not used again.
5.12 DMT is not a trademark of Droplet Measurement Technologies so spell out the company name.
5.28 Millibar is used here while SI units are used in figure 1. Change to SI units.
5.30 "..with the pressure reached +5 mb." doesn't make sense. Also change to SI units.
6.24 A series of experiments 'were' conducted.
8.24 The justification for these corrections and what they mean are a little unclear. A reference (CAS manual?) would do. I assume that the numbers in Table S3 are the digitised voltage levels, what is 'x' (or is this supposed to be a multiplication sign)? A bit more information in the S3 caption would be good.
10.2 It is difficult to link the features in figure 2 to the state of the chamber given in figure 1 to the description given in this section. It appears as if t=0 in figure 1 is not the same time as t=0 in figure 2 so shifting the time axis of figure 2 would be very useful. The time in seconds could be possibly added to the text here to assist the reader as well. For example in 10.8, "During the second step of the expansion from t=900 s (?)..."
11.29 Alpha is spelt out throughout the manuscript so this should be made consistent.
12.3 As it starts the paragraph, it is unclear what increase is being referred to here. Make explicit what 'this' refers to, eg "The increase in the measured Dpol signal could be explained..."
12.11 Should this sentence be proceeded by an 'a', "A small decay of the averaged diameter..."?
12.12 The meaning of 'essentially' is unclear.
12.13 This sentence refers to a 'much slower' process. Is this slower than the timescales shown in figure 8 or is this the decay shown in figure 8? The confusion is probably due to problems with the prior couple of sentences so some rephrasing of this paragraph would improve clarity.
13.1 How this is a comparison with SIMONE data is unclear as none has been presented.
13.4 This refers to results that do not appear in this manuscript so should be removed. I assume that this data appears in Jarvinen so an alternative may be to refer to that.
13.16 The acronym PSD is not used elsewhere in the main text so can be removed (and defined in the supplement).

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ED: Reconsider after minor revisions (Editor review) (23 Feb 2016) by Veli-Matti Kerminen

AR by Leonid Nichman on behalf of the Authors (03 Mar 2016) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Publish as is (03 Mar 2016) by Veli-Matti Kerminen

AR by Leonid Nichman on behalf of the Authors (04 Mar 2016)

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Short summary

Processes in the atmosphere are often governed by the physical and chemical properties of small cloud particles. Ice, water, and mixed clouds, as well as viscous aerosols, were formed under controlled conditions at the CLOUD-CERN facility. The experimental results show a link between cloud particle properties and their unique optical fingerprints. The classification map presented here allows easier discrimination between various particles such as viscous organic aerosol, salt, ice, and liquid.