Observations of the microphysical evolution of convective clouds in the southwest of the United Kingdom

Jackson, Robert; French, Jeffrey R.; Leon, David C.; Plummer, David M.; Lasher-Trapp, Sonia; Blyth, Alan M.; Korolev, Alexei

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-18-15329-2018

Articles | Volume 18, issue 20

https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-18-15329-2018

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

https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-18-15329-2018

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

Articles | Volume 18, issue 20

Research article

|

25 Oct 2018

Research article |

| 25 Oct 2018

Observations of the microphysical evolution of convective clouds in the southwest of the United Kingdom

Robert Jackson, Jeffrey R. French, David C. Leon, David M. Plummer, Sonia Lasher-Trapp, Alan M. Blyth, and Alexei Korolev

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Final revised paper (published on 25 Oct 2018)
Preprint (discussion started on 08 May 2018)

Interactive discussion

Status: closed

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

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- Supplement

RC1: 'Review of "Observations of the microphysical evolution of convective clouds in SW UK"', Anonymous Referee #1, 14 May 2018
- AC1: 'Resonse to Anonymous Reviewer #1', Robert Jackson, 15 Aug 2018
RC2: 'review of Jackson et al.', Anonymous Referee #2, 11 Jun 2018
- AC2: 'Response to Anonymous Reviewer #2', Robert Jackson, 15 Aug 2018

Peer-review completion

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

AR by Robert Jackson on behalf of the Authors (15 Aug 2018) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Referee Nomination & Report Request started (24 Aug 2018) by Athanasios Nenes

RR by Anonymous Referee #2 (11 Sep 2018)

Suggestions for revision or reasons for rejection

I am happy with most of the responses to my comments and i am pleased to see that the authors have computed the splinter production rates.

The authors then go on to use the computations to indicate that they should not include these results in the paper. Here i disagree and think that including these results would be useful for the community for two reasons.

i) If the analysis suggests that it is not possible to estimate splinter rate from aircraft measurements with current technology, then this is a result that it would be good to share.

ii) Using their approach the authors could generate a diagram that shows the ratio of predicted to measured splinters as a function of fraction of particles assumed to be columns and the fraction assumed to be graupel?
The authors could talk about what would be required for the data to be in agreement with the laboratory results and whether there are techniques that could be used to constrain that fraction.

In addition, here are some thoughts related to the current analysis:

Is there a need to worry about column fraction, given that the contribution to number concentration from primary nucleation is thought to be insignificant? The ratio of predicted to measured splinter production rate would be dependent upon graupel fraction only.

From fig. R6 it looks like the graupel fraction would need to be ~0.1 of the >800 micron sized particles for the centroids of each case's data is on the 1:1 line? It might be possible to do an assessment using human particle shape interpretation on some representative imagery to estimate if the graupel fraction is 1 in 10 of the particles larger than 800 microns?

Therefore, i would like to see the inclusion of a discussion that outlines the findings and limitations of their splinter rate analysis.

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ED: Publish subject to minor revisions (review by editor) (24 Sep 2018) by Athanasios Nenes

AR by Robert Jackson on behalf of the Authors (04 Oct 2018) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Publish as is (05 Oct 2018) by Athanasios Nenes

Short summary

This paper looks at microphysical observations of growing cumulus clouds in the southwest United Kingdom sampled during the COnvective Precipitation Experiment (COPE). Our results suggest that secondary ice production processes are contributing to the observed concentrations and that entrainment of particles from remnant cloud layers may have acted to aid in secondary ice production.