Clouds over the summertime Sahara: an evaluation of Met Office retrievals from Meteosat Second Generation using airborne remote sensing

Kealy, John C.; Marenco, Franco; Marsham, John H.; Garcia-Carreras, Luis; Francis, Pete N.; Cooke, Michael C.; Hocking, James

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-17-5789-2017

Articles | Volume 17, issue 9

https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-17-5789-2017

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

https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-17-5789-2017

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

Articles | Volume 17, issue 9

Research article

|

11 May 2017

Research article |

| 11 May 2017

Clouds over the summertime Sahara: an evaluation of Met Office retrievals from Meteosat Second Generation using airborne remote sensing

John C. Kealy, Franco Marenco, John H. Marsham, Luis Garcia-Carreras, Pete N. Francis, Michael C. Cooke, and James Hocking

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Final revised paper (published on 11 May 2017)
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Preprint (discussion started on 11 Nov 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 of Kealy et al.', Anonymous Referee #2, 09 Dec 2016
- AC1: 'Response to comments from Anonymous Referee #2', John Kealy, 24 Feb 2017
RC2: 'Review of Kealy et al.', Anonymous Referee #1, 19 Jan 2017
- AC2: 'Response to comments from Anonymous Referee #1', John Kealy, 24 Feb 2017

Peer-review completion

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

AR by John Kealy on behalf of the Authors (24 Feb 2017) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Referee Nomination & Report Request started (04 Mar 2017) by Jui-Yuan Christine Chiu

RR by Anonymous Referee #2 (06 Mar 2017)

RR by Anonymous Referee #3 (10 Apr 2017)

ED: Publish as is (10 Apr 2017) by Jui-Yuan Christine Chiu

AR by John Kealy on behalf of the Authors (13 Apr 2017)

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Short summary

Using novel methods of cloud detection from aircraft data over the Sahara desert, we evaluate the performance of the Meteosat satellite in measuring cloud properties: namely, the cloud mask and the cloud-top height. We find that the cloud mask can justifiably be used for many applications (such as creating a detailed Saharan cloud climatology), and we also discuss its limitations. As for the cloud-top height, we show that the dataset cannot yet be considered robust in this part of the world.