Effect of volcanic aerosol on stratospheric NO2 and N2O5 from 2002–2014 as measured by Odin-OSIRIS and Envisat-MIPAS

Adams, Cristen; Bourassa, Adam E.; McLinden, Chris A.; Sioris, Chris E.; von Clarmann, Thomas; Funke, Bernd; Rieger, Landon A.; Degenstein, Douglas A.

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-17-8063-2017

Articles | Volume 17, issue 13

https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-17-8063-2017

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

https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-17-8063-2017

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

Articles | Volume 17, issue 13

Research article

|

04 Jul 2017

Research article |

| 04 Jul 2017

Effect of volcanic aerosol on stratospheric NO₂ and N₂O₅ from 2002–2014 as measured by Odin-OSIRIS and Envisat-MIPAS

Cristen Adams, Adam E. Bourassa, Chris A. McLinden, Chris E. Sioris, Thomas von Clarmann, Bernd Funke, Landon A. Rieger, and Douglas A. Degenstein

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Final revised paper (published on 04 Jul 2017)
Preprint (discussion started on 03 Jun 2016)

Interactive discussion

Status: closed

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

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- Supplement

RC1: 'Referee report', Anonymous Referee #3, 01 Jul 2016
- RC3: 'Line numbers refer to preliminary manuscript', Anonymous Referee #2, 08 Jul 2016
- AC1: 'Response to Referee #3', Cristen Adams, 10 Apr 2017
RC2: 'Interesting data but analysis has to be improved', Anonymous Referee #2, 08 Jul 2016
- AC2: 'Response to Referee #2', Cristen Adams, 11 Apr 2017
RC4: 'Interactive comment on "Effect of volcanic aerosol on stratospheric NO2 and N2O5 from 2002-2014 as measured by Odin-OSIRIS and Envisat-MIPAS" by C. Adams et al.', Anonymous Referee #1, 13 Jul 2016
- AC3: 'Response to Referee #1', Cristen Adams, 11 Apr 2017

Peer-review completion

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

AR by Cristen Adams on behalf of the Authors (11 Apr 2017) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Referee Nomination & Report Request started (11 Apr 2017) by Farahnaz Khosrawi

RR by Anonymous Referee #2 (12 May 2017)

Suggestions for revision or reasons for rejection

\section{General Remarks}

The manuscript has improved compared to the
previous version. Instead of considering requests of the referees for
additional remarks on effects of polar stratospheric clouds and on the
coarse temporal and spatial resolution the parts sensitive to that were
skipped. Because of this an additional sentence in the introduction like
"This coarse resolution study is suitable for use with longterm chemistry
climate model simulations or statistics but not for understanding
processes" should be included. It would be useful to provide a similar
analysis for the effects of temporal and spatial resolution for the tropics
(0°) as the one for 60°N and polar day eruptions included in the
interactive comment AC1 in an appendix or supplement.

Also, the original papers (Randel and Wu, 1996, and or Wallace et al.,
1993, both J. Atmos. Sci.) on the QBO-fit should be cited for better understanding.

\section{Specific remarks}

Abstract and other sections: How is 'mean tropopause' defined in
midlatitudes where the tropopause height is varying with the Rossby-waves?
Do you mean 'climatological mean tropopause height' here, independent of
the observed air mass?

'Baseline NO_2' is mentioned very often in the text but is not defined
in enough detail. In Section 3.1 some crude information is given but it
would be better to provide explicitly the used time periods for better
explanation of the odd positive anomalies in the figures. I would prefer
to use 'background NO_2'. It might be useful to show it in a figure. Is
it different for the instruments and the model?

In Eqn. 3 better write '4 $\cdot$ 1000' and mention the unit conversion
factor 1000 here (can be skipped in appendix then).

Table 3 and Figure 3: It is odd that the strongest eruption in the tropics
in the MIPAS period, Rabaul (sometimes called Tavurvur, 7 Oct 2006,
4S/152E, see e.g. Santer et al., 2014, Nature Geoscience), is not listed.
In Fig. 3 it is close to the second strongest signal in
AOD but also NO_2 (combined effect with Soufriere Hills?).
Details and further references on that see Höpfner
et al. (2015). It might be also worth to check if the eruption of Jebel
el Tair (16N/42E, 30 Sep 2007, northward transport of aerosol as for Nabro) is significant.

Conclusions, paragraph 1: mention analysed latitudes!

\section{Technical corrections}

Page 2, line 14: Adjust text to the removal of analysed data
(vortex data were not analysed).

Page 7, line 26: I suppose it should be 40°S -- 40°N.

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ED: Reconsider after minor revisions (Editor review) (12 May 2017) by Farahnaz Khosrawi

AR by Cristen Adams on behalf of the Authors (22 May 2017) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Publish as is (22 May 2017) by Farahnaz Khosrawi

AR by Cristen Adams on behalf of the Authors (25 May 2017)

Short summary

We measured the relationship between volcanic aerosol and trace gases in the stratosphere using the OSIRIS and MIPAS satellite instruments between 2002 and 2014. We found that levels of stratospheric NO₂ and N₂O₅ both decreased significantly in the presence of volcanic aerosol. These decreases were consistent with the modeling results.