Equatorward dispersion of a high-latitude volcanic plume and its relation to the Asian summer monsoon: a case study of the Sarychev eruption in 2009

Wu, Xue; Griessbach, Sabine; Hoffmann, Lars

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-17-13439-2017

Articles | Volume 17, issue 21

https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-17-13439-2017

© Author(s) 2017. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-17-13439-2017

© Author(s) 2017. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.

Articles | Volume 17, issue 21

Research article

|

13 Nov 2017

Research article |

| 13 Nov 2017

Equatorward dispersion of a high-latitude volcanic plume and its relation to the Asian summer monsoon: a case study of the Sarychev eruption in 2009

Xue Wu, Sabine Griessbach, and Lars Hoffmann

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Final revised paper (published on 13 Nov 2017)
Preprint (discussion started on 19 May 2017)

Interactive discussion

Status: closed

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

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RC1: 'Review of Wu et al. 2017', Anonymous Referee #1, 16 Jun 2017
RC2: 'Review of “Equatorward dispersion of high-latitude volcanic plume and ist relation to the Asian summer monsoon: a case study of the Sarychev eruption in 2009” by Wu et al. (2017, ACP)', Anonymous Referee #2, 16 Jun 2017
RC3: 'Review', Anonymous Referee #3, 19 Jun 2017
AC1: 'Authors' reply to comments', Xue Wu, 24 Aug 2017
AC2: 'A separate file of manuscript with all changes marked', Xue Wu, 24 Aug 2017

Peer-review completion

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

AR by Xue Wu on behalf of the Authors (24 Aug 2017) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Referee Nomination & Report Request started (28 Aug 2017) by Anja Schmidt

RR by Anonymous Referee #1 (13 Sep 2017)

RR by Anonymous Referee #2 (21 Sep 2017)

Suggestions for revision or reasons for rejection

Review of revision of Wu et al. 2017 (ACP)

In general the reviewer addressed my concerns in the revised manuscript, expect for one item:

Past review question:
4. Figure 13, you argue the gap between 2009.10 and 2010.2 is due to temperature perturbation. Are you suggesting H2SO4-H2O aerosol gets evaporated? I don’t think so, the reason is at such low temp, the vapor pressure is super low. Graves may leads to some evaporation, but I assume a few months gap is not expected. Any other reasons? What is the green in early 2009 and late 2010? Any more analysis/evidence suggests they are actually from Sarychev volcanic aerosols for the period of 2009.7-2010.5?

Author's reply:
Actually, the gap is due to an aerosol detection method artefact.
The aerosol detection is based on an aerosol-cloud-index (ACI) method described in Griessbach et al. (2016). An analysis of the entire ACI time series shows that there is a very regular gap pattern: every 6 months in about January and July there is a gap. The periodic (semi-annual) changes in the ACI are caused by the radiances in the 960 cm-1 window of the AI. At 960 cm−1 an impact of CO2 hot bands (at around 50 km) is the most likely explanation for the detection artefact. We added a brief explanation in the revised manuscript.

Seems you didn’t fully answer/discuss my question. What is the green in early 2009 and late 2010 on your plot? Are they real aerosol (volcanic? or others) or the artifacts you mentioned in the reply?
I am a little surprised that MIPAS can tell aerosol/cloud effectively in TTL (down to 15 km), Are the data really meaningful?
For now, I am still not convinced on the tap-recorder behavior. Please provide more analysis or you can drop this section.

Referee Report: PDF

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ED: Reconsider after minor revisions (Editor review) (26 Sep 2017) by Anja Schmidt

AR by Xue Wu on behalf of the Authors (27 Sep 2017) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Reconsider after minor revisions (Editor review) (05 Oct 2017) by Anja Schmidt

AR by Xue Wu on behalf of the Authors (06 Oct 2017) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Publish as is (12 Oct 2017) by Anja Schmidt

AR by Xue Wu on behalf of the Authors (12 Oct 2017) Manuscript

Short summary

This study is focused on the Sarychev eruption in 2009. Based on Lagrangian model simulations and satellite data, the equatorward transport of the plume and aerosol from the Sarychev eruption is confirmed, and the transport is facilitated by the Asian summer monsoon anticyclonic circulations. The aerosol transported to the tropics remained for months and dispersed upward, which could make the Sarychev eruption have a similar global climate impact as a tropical volcanic eruption.