Assessing the ability to derive rates of polar middle-atmospheric descent using trace gas measurements from remote sensors

Ryan, Niall J.; Kinnison, Douglas E.; Garcia, Rolando R.; Hoffmann, Christoph G.; Palm, Mathias; Raffalski, Uwe; Notholt, Justus

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-18-1457-2018

Articles | Volume 18, issue 3

https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-18-1457-2018

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

https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-18-1457-2018

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

Articles | Volume 18, issue 3

Research article

|

02 Feb 2018

Research article |

| 02 Feb 2018

Assessing the ability to derive rates of polar middle-atmospheric descent using trace gas measurements from remote sensors

Niall J. Ryan, Douglas E. Kinnison, Rolando R. Garcia, Christoph G. Hoffmann, Mathias Palm, Uwe Raffalski, and Justus Notholt

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Final revised paper (published on 02 Feb 2018)
Preprint (discussion started on 21 Jun 2017)

Interactive discussion

Status: closed

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

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- Supplement

RC1: 'Review', Anonymous Referee #1, 23 Jun 2017
- AC1: 'Response to Reviewer #1', Niall Ryan, 15 Sep 2017
RC2: 'Assessing the ability to derive rates of polar middle-atmospheric descent using trace gas measurements from remote sensors', Anonymous Referee #2, 17 Jul 2017
- AC2: 'Response to Reviewer #2', Niall Ryan, 15 Sep 2017
RC3: 'review of acp-20170557', Anonymous Referee #3, 21 Jul 2017
- AC3: 'Response to Reviewer #3', Niall Ryan, 15 Sep 2017
RC4: 'RC #4 Review of Ryan et al. 2017', Anonymous Referee #4, 01 Aug 2017
- AC4: 'Response to Reviewer #4', Niall Ryan, 15 Sep 2017

Peer-review completion

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

AR by Niall Ryan on behalf of the Authors (15 Sep 2017) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Referee Nomination & Report Request started (16 Oct 2017) by William Ward

RR by Anonymous Referee #1 (18 Oct 2017)

RR by Anonymous Referee #3 (03 Nov 2017)

ED: Publish subject to minor revisions (review by editor) (19 Nov 2017) by William Ward

AR by Niall Ryan on behalf of the Authors (27 Nov 2017) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Publish as is (16 Dec 2017) by William Ward

AR by Niall Ryan on behalf of the Authors (18 Dec 2017) Manuscript

Short summary

We used model output and instrument data to assess how well polar atmospheric descent rates can be derived using concentration measurements of long-lived gases in the atmosphere. The results indicate that the method incurs errors as large as the descent rates, and often leads to a misinterpretation of the direction of air motion. The rates derived using this method do not appear to represent the mean vertical wind in the middle atmosphere, and we suggest an alternate definition.