Reanalysis intercomparisons of stratospheric polar processing diagnostics

Lawrence, Zachary D.; Manney, Gloria L.; Wargan, Krzysztof

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-18-13547-2018

Articles | Volume 18, issue 18

https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-18-13547-2018

© Author(s) 2018. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Special issue:

The SPARC Reanalysis Intercomparison Project (S-RIP) (ACP/ESSD...

https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-18-13547-2018

© Author(s) 2018. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 18, issue 18

Research article

|

25 Sep 2018

Research article |

| 25 Sep 2018

Reanalysis intercomparisons of stratospheric polar processing diagnostics

Zachary D. Lawrence, Gloria L. Manney, and Krzysztof Wargan

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Final revised paper (published on 25 Sep 2018)
Preprint (discussion started on 19 Jan 2018)

Interactive discussion

Status: closed

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

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RC1: 'Review of Lawrence et al.', Anonymous Referee #2, 21 Feb 2018
- AC1: 'response to reviewer 1's comments', Gloria Manney, 31 Jul 2018
RC2: 'Referee review', Simon Chabrillat, 15 Apr 2018
- AC2: 'responses to Simon Chabrillat's comments', Gloria Manney, 31 Jul 2018

Peer-review completion

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

AR by Gloria Manney on behalf of the Authors (01 Aug 2018) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Referee Nomination & Report Request started (04 Aug 2018) by William Lahoz (deceased)

RR by Simon Chabrillat (07 Aug 2018)

RR by Anonymous Referee #2 (21 Aug 2018)

Suggestions for revision or reasons for rejection

Reanalysis intercomparisons of stratospheric polar processing
diagnostics

Z. D. Lawrence et al.

This is my second review of this manuscript. I thank the authors for their
careful consideration of the comments of both reviewers, to my reading the
manuscript is clearer and more digestible than the first version. I am happy to
recommend it for publication essentially as is - I have one overall thought
which the authors may which to consider and two very minor textual points.

The authors at various points discuss the value of reanalysis intercomparisons,
generally in a very positive light. If I understand correctly, the basic
argument is that, for highly derived quanities of relevance to polar
processing, or for quantities that otherwise remain underconstrained by
observations, this kind of reanalysis intercomparison serves to quantify the
state of our knowledge in a way that would be otherwise very difficult to do.
If multiple, 'independently' produced reanalyses agree, this gives confidence
that the available observations constrain the quantity in question. I agree
that this is a powerful methodology, but the point that Simon brought up is an
important considerationn; there are plausible reasons for reanalyses to be
wrong in the same way. I bring this up only suggest that it may be worth being
a bit more explicit somewhere about the underlying philosophy. Perhaps it is
all in the text as it stands but I think my comment in the previous review
about reanalyses being the 'best' tool available was possibly a result of me
taking the comment more broadly than it was intended.

p4, l8 'do/did not' is confusing here - is the intent to say some limb-sounding
satellites did not retrieve temperaures low enough and those that do typically
have incomplete coverage?

p8 l19: perhaps more precise to say they are simply given in table A2?

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ED: Publish subject to technical corrections (23 Aug 2018) by William Lahoz (deceased)

AR by Gloria Manney on behalf of the Authors (29 Aug 2018) Author's response Manuscript

Short summary

Stratospheric polar processing diagnostics are compared in both hemispheres for four recent high-resolution reanalyses. Temperature-based diagnostics show largest differences before 1999 in the Antarctic; agreement becomes much better thereafter, when the reanalysis inputs include higher-resolution satellite radiances. Recommendations for usage of reanalysis data in research studies are given based on the differences among the reanalyses, which can be substantial and difficult to interpret.