Upper tropospheric cloud systems derived from IR sounders: properties of cirrus anvils in the tropics

Protopapadaki, Sofia E.; Stubenrauch, Claudia J.; Feofilov, Artem G.

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-17-3845-2017

Articles | Volume 17, issue 6

https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-17-3845-2017

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

https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-17-3845-2017

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

Articles | Volume 17, issue 6

Research article

|

21 Mar 2017

Research article |

| 21 Mar 2017

Upper tropospheric cloud systems derived from IR sounders: properties of cirrus anvils in the tropics

Sofia E. Protopapadaki, Claudia J. Stubenrauch, and Artem G. Feofilov

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Final revised paper (published on 21 Mar 2017)
Supplement to the final revised paper
Preprint (discussion started on 05 Oct 2016)

Interactive discussion

Status: closed

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

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- Supplement

RC1: 'A review of a paper by S. Protopapadaki, C. Stubenrauch, and A. Feofilov', Anonymous Referee #1, 03 Nov 2016
- AC1: 'answers to comments by AR1', Sofia Protopapadaki, 12 Jan 2017
RC2: 'Review', Anonymous Referee #2, 09 Nov 2016
- AC2: 'answers to comments by AR2', Sofia Protopapadaki, 12 Jan 2017

Peer-review completion

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

AR by Sofia Protopapadaki on behalf of the Authors (16 Jan 2017) Manuscript

ED: Referee Nomination & Report Request started (19 Jan 2017) by Graham Feingold

RR by Anonymous Referee #2 (30 Jan 2017)

Suggestions for revision or reasons for rejection

Overview

I thank the authors for carefully considering and thoroughly responding to my comments. They have put in a lot of effort to revise the manuscript, and I am happy with most of their changes. Therefore, I only have some minor comments and suggestions.

Minor Comments

1. I don’t question that convective cores contain or once contained active deep convection, so I don’t think the addition of the ERA vertical velocity is necessary. I simply wanted a clear statement in the text that these regions often include stratiform precipitation in addition to convective precipitation, which is now included, so including or excluding the new ERA vertical velocity analysis is up to you. If it is kept though, I suggest removing the term “updrafts” though because updrafts typically refer to smaller scales than the ERA analysis. Vertical motion at the ERA resolution can correspond to embedded convective motions or larger-scale ascent associated with waves or stratiform precipitation.
2. Is the definition of land and ocean (fraction > 0.5) included anywhere in the text? If not, can this definition be added to the text?
3. What is meant by “less convective ocean regions” on page 10, lines 28-29 in the track changed version of the manuscript? Please calrify.
4. 1. I like the addition of regional relationships, but it would be nice to point out that in addition to having similar relationships to all tropical land and ocean regions in general, relationships between different land regions or different ocean regions do differ, especially for minimum brightness temperature and thin cirrus/anvil fraction, while rain rates are quite variable between different land regions. It also seems that convective intensity related metrics (minimum Tb, rain rate) differ the most early in the life cycle, while area related metrics differ the most late in the life cycle. Again, it is up to you whether to add information, but I find it to be relevant to interpreting the larger-scale tropical land and ocean results.
5. The in depth first paragraph added in Section 4 discussing results in Takahashi and Luo (2014) seems out of place in a results section, since it doesn’t discuss results from this manuscript, and I’m confused as to its relevance to interpreting the results. I suggest cutting this down or removing it. Additionally, the second to last paragraph in Section 4 seems like a rather large aside, again getting into convective intensity and relationships with environmental conditions and radar measurements, which again, seems off topic, especially since the discussion of the results is in the context of convective depth rather than intensity. Not that intensity can’t be mentioned, but focusing on it as much as it now is in these paragraphs draws attention away from the main points of the paper.
6. Although an increase in the size of systems is observed with increased convective depth in different regions, it may be important to note that the slope of this relationship changes, especially for ocean regions, where the W. Pacific is similar to land regions rather than the other ocean regions (E. Pacific and Atlantic), so it would seem that the ocean points in Figure 11 are not representative of all ocean regions, and therefore, the statement on page 12, lines 31-33 in the track changed version isn’t true for the W. Pacific.
7. Similarly, for thin cirrus/anvil fraction as a function of minimum Tb, I agree that the general relationship of the fraction increasing with decreasing minimum Tb occurs in all regions, but the regional spread of the magnitude of the thin cirrus/anvil fraction for a given minimum Tb is large, which I think should be noted in the text.

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ED: Reconsider after minor revisions (Editor review) (31 Jan 2017) by Graham Feingold

AR by Sofia Protopapadaki on behalf of the Authors (10 Feb 2017) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Publish as is (10 Feb 2017) by Graham Feingold

AR by Sofia Protopapadaki on behalf of the Authors (14 Feb 2017)

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Short summary

Upper tropospheric clouds cover about 30 % of the Earth and play a key role in the climate system by modulating the Earth's energy budget and heat transport. In this article, we study upper tropospheric cloud systems using cloud properties deduced from infrared sounders. Our analyses show that the size of the systems as well as the fraction of thin cirrus over the total anvil area increases with increasing convective depth.