Diurnal variability of the atmospheric boundary layer height over a tropical station in the Indian monsoon region

Mehta, Sanjay Kumar; Ratnam, Madineni Venkat; Sunilkumar, Sukumarapillai V.; Rao, Daggumati Narayana; Krishna Murthy, Boddapaty V.

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-17-531-2017

Articles | Volume 17, issue 1

https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-17-531-2017

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

https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-17-531-2017

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

Articles | Volume 17, issue 1

Research article

|

11 Jan 2017

Research article |

| 11 Jan 2017

Diurnal variability of the atmospheric boundary layer height over a tropical station in the Indian monsoon region

Sanjay Kumar Mehta, Madineni Venkat Ratnam, Sukumarapillai V. Sunilkumar, Daggumati Narayana Rao, and Boddapaty V. Krishna Murthy

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Final revised paper (published on 11 Jan 2017)
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Preprint (discussion started on 04 Jul 2016)
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Interactive discussion

Status: closed

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

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RC1: 'Review', Anonymous Referee #1, 27 Jul 2016
- AC1: 'Response to Referee #1', Sanjay Mehta, 24 Oct 2016
RC2: 'Review of the article', Anonymous Referee #2, 12 Sep 2016
- AC2: 'Response to Referee #2', Sanjay Mehta, 24 Oct 2016

Peer-review completion

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

AR by Sanjay Mehta on behalf of the Authors (10 Nov 2016) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Referee Nomination & Report Request started (16 Nov 2016) by Hailong Wang

RR by Anonymous Referee #2 (02 Dec 2016)

Suggestions for revision or reasons for rejection

Review of the article titled “Diurnal variability of the atmospheric boundary layer height over a tropical station in the Indian monsoon region” by Mehta and coauthors for publication in the Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics.

This is the first revision of the manuscript. Authors have incorporated the suggestions made by both reviewers and it has resulted in substantial improvement in the manuscript. However, I think the authors have made mistakes in calculating some of the parameters and I think the manuscript needs to be revised again to correct those.

1. Calculation of the LCL height (Zlcl) is incorrect. The Bolton (1980) formulation gives you the temperature of the LCL, to calculate the height simply subtract the surface air temperature and divide by the dry adiabatic lapse rate (g/Cp=9.8). There is no need to invoke pressure and scale height etc. in this calculation. The reported values of Zlcl are a lot higher than expected.
Zlcl = (Tlcl-Tsfc)/(g/Cp).

2. If the LCL is lower than the inversion base height and the boundary layer is convective then clouds form. As you have the cloud boundaries (base and top) for each campaign, please include them in the schematic in Fig 12.

Few Minor issues:

1. The text can go through some improvements as many portions of the introduction and summary section are not related to the current research and could be trimmed. For example Line 63-100, I am not sure how studies conducted over glaciers (line 85) are relevant here. In the revised version, you have modified the text to include the specific objectives of this study. However, I highly encourage the authors to consider mentioning the objectives in the following way “The objectives of this study are 1) document the boundary layer heights from radiosonde data and 2) study the evolution of the different layers within the ABL”. This is similar to the way you have reported the conclusions.

2. Is the IST similar to local time over Gadanki?

3. Caption of Figure 5: please change to “scatter plot between ..” from “correlation”. The caption is meant to describe the figures and not its objectives.

4. There are several small typos in the manuscript as is, I recommend the authors to do a thorough grammatical revision of it.

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ED: Reconsider after minor revisions (Editor review) (05 Dec 2016) by Hailong Wang

AR by Sanjay Mehta on behalf of the Authors (14 Dec 2016) Manuscript

ED: Publish as is (17 Dec 2016) by Hailong Wang

AR by Sanjay Mehta on behalf of the Authors (17 Dec 2016)

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Short summary

Study of the diurnal variation of the atmospheric boundary layer (ABL) height is important for the knowledge of pollutant dispersion, crucial for all living beings. The most difficult part in the study of the diurnal variation is in identification of the stable boundary layer which occurs ~ 50% of times only and mostly during nighttime winter. Surface temperature and clouds directly affect the diurnal pattern of the ABL. Thus, stronger (weaker) diurnal variation found during pre-monsoon (winter).