An investigation on the origin of regional springtime ozone episodes in the western Mediterranean

Kalabokas, Pavlos; Hjorth, Jens; Foret, Gilles; Dufour, Gaëlle; Eremenko, Maxim; Siour, Guillaume; Cuesta, Juan; Beekmann, Matthias

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-17-3905-2017

Articles | Volume 17, issue 6

https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-17-3905-2017

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

https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-17-3905-2017

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

Articles | Volume 17, issue 6

Research article

|

22 Mar 2017

Research article |

| 22 Mar 2017

An investigation on the origin of regional springtime ozone episodes in the western Mediterranean

Pavlos Kalabokas, Jens Hjorth, Gilles Foret, Gaëlle Dufour, Maxim Eremenko, Guillaume Siour, Juan Cuesta, and Matthias Beekmann

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Final revised paper (published on 22 Mar 2017)
Supplement to the final revised paper
Preprint (discussion started on 29 Aug 2016)

Interactive discussion

Status: closed

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

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- Supplement

RC1: 'anonymous review', Anonymous Referee #1, 26 Sep 2016
- AC1: 'Final response, Referee 1', Pavlos Kalabokas, 02 Dec 2016
RC2: 'An investigation on the origin of regional spring time ozone episodes in the Western Mediterranean and Central Europe', Anonymous Referee #2, 30 Sep 2016
- AC2: 'Final response, Referee 2', Pavlos Kalabokas, 02 Dec 2016
SC1: 'missing acknowledgements', Martin Steinbacher, 11 Oct 2016
- AC3: 'Final response, Short comment', Pavlos Kalabokas, 02 Dec 2016

Peer-review completion

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

AR by Pavlos Kalabokas on behalf of the Authors (02 Dec 2016) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Referee Nomination & Report Request started (05 Dec 2016) by Timothy Bertram

RR by Anonymous Referee #1 (10 Dec 2016)

Suggestions for revision or reasons for rejection

In my first review I did not provide a critical review of the text because the figure presentation was so poor it wasn’t possible for me to properly interpret the results. The authors have made an attempt to revise the figures but they are still not up to my standards and I am far too busy to spend an unreasonable amount of time trying to understand poorly drafted figures. High quality figures allow for a much more rapid review process.

1) Many of the map figures are too small to be seen without blowing them up on my computer screen and peering at them to figure out if I’m looking at a wind barb or part of the map. These figures are basically illegible when printed. For some reason the authors provided many figures at low resolution instead of providing crisp high-resolution tiff or postscript images.

2) The pages are full of white space with tiny panels. There is no need for all that white space. Place the colorbars underneath the panels and FILL the page from the left margin to the right margin with the panels, with just a couple of millimeters between panels. Efficient use of the page would allow me to see the figures.

3) The wind barbs are difficult to see because they are the same color as the map. White wind barbs are more obvious.

4) The color scale of the IASI images is not helpful. Having bright magenta (low ozone) very close to bright, bright red (high ozone) is not intuitive for grasping mixing ratio gradients.

5) the 10 km IASI figures are meant to tell me about ozone in the upper troposphere. But the images are provided with a stratospheric color scale with the lowest value being 150 ppb. For me to understand ozone in the UT and the transition to the stratosphere I need a color scale that covers the range 30-150 ppbv. If the coarse vertical resolution of IASI does not effectively detect ozone values at 10 km below 150 ppb, then this is the wrong product to use and another product should be used. OMI provides ozone in the UT in the 300 hPa range.

6) Figure 7 repeats the specific humidity anomaly panel and omits the vertical velocity.

7) Why use both NCEP and ECMWF? Why not use just ECMWF as these products are better?

8) The ECMWF vertical velocity values are poorly presented. In figure 3 almost everything is white because the color scale ranges from -4 to 4. Why choose a color scale that is so broad that it provides almost no information? Furthermore, why use a different color scale for the other vertical velocity panel in Figure 3? If I am to effectively understand how vertical velocity changes from one day to the next I need the same color scale.

9) The surface ozone map plots have very poor resolution and they have far too much empty space over Scandinavia and Russia. The focus is on the Mediterranean and I could see the figures much more clearly if they focused on this region.

10) when referring to an ozone measurement of ppb, mixing ratio should be used rather than concentration

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ED: Reconsider after major revisions (02 Jan 2017) by Timothy Bertram

AR by Pavlos Kalabokas on behalf of the Authors (31 Jan 2017) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Publish as is (06 Feb 2017) by Timothy Bertram

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Short summary

The main atmospheric mechanisms linked with spring surface ozone episodes over the western Mediterranean are examined. It comes out that high surface midday ozone values are usually linked with regional ozone episodes, which are strongly influenced by some specific meteorological conditions. The better understanding of the ozone variability in the lower troposphere and the boundary layer over the examined regions will help in the formulation of more effective policies in environment and climate.