Temporal variability of tidal and gravity waves during  a record long 10-day continuous lidar sounding

Baumgarten, Kathrin; Gerding, Michael; Baumgarten, Gerd; Lübken, Franz-Josef

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-18-371-2018

Articles | Volume 18, issue 1

Atmos. Chem. Phys., 18, 371–384, 2018

https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-18-371-2018

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

Special issue: Sources, propagation, dissipation and impact of gravity waves...

Atmos. Chem. Phys., 18, 371–384, 2018

https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-18-371-2018

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

Articles | Volume 18, issue 1

Research article 12 Jan 2018

Research article | 12 Jan 2018

Temporal variability of tidal and gravity waves during a record long 10-day continuous lidar sounding

Kathrin Baumgarten et al.

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Final revised paper (published on 12 Jan 2018)
Preprint (discussion started on 15 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, 30 Jul 2017
- AC1: 'Response to Reviewer 1', Kathrin Baumgarten, 14 Sep 2017
RC2: 'Review', Anonymous Referee #2, 17 Aug 2017
- AC2: 'Response to Reviewer 2', Kathrin Baumgarten, 14 Sep 2017

Peer-review completion

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

AR by Kathrin Baumgarten on behalf of the Authors (14 Sep 2017) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Referee Nomination & Report Request started (25 Oct 2017) by Jörg Gumbel

RR by Anonymous Referee #1 (06 Nov 2017)

Suggestions for revision or reasons for rejection

The paper presents a time series of unprecidented length and altitude coverage. Gravity waves and tidal waves are simultaneously analysed from these data and interpreted. There are indications for GW tidal interactions. The major comments from the first submission are taken into account in the revised version. The paper hence should be published in ACP. However, there are some technical points regarding readibility. Nothing of this is difficult to correct, but since there is quite a number I recommend minor revision.

Specific comments:

As a general advice: number all panels of your figures individually. References in the text become shorter and easier to read (e.g. Fig. 6a instead of Fig. 6 upper left panel)

P1L4 and not adequately implemented

P1L10/L13 during the measurement period

P1L22 through -> by ? structures, by convective ...

P2L14 Hertzog would be superpressure balloons which is not in your list. Maybe use here, in addition, one of the overview papers again (FA2003,A2010)

P2L15 a global

P3L13 results -> findings

P4L19 mean temperature profile averaged over

P4L23 data sets do

Fig 3: Better have a 2-column figure, reduced to one print column it is too small. Label all 4 panels a to d.

P6L-4 ... referred to as ... However, we ... mention that ...

P6L-2 ... not necessarily related to global tidal ...
Tides are (part-)global, also the non-migrating tides, otherwise you need to call them differently (e.g. 24h period GW). ... related to *single* global ... ?

P7L13 sounding period

P7L17 or the most of the waves occuring in this period range

P7L19 is increased as well in the vertically ... as in the ... The vertically filtered data show ...

P7L23 between the 10th of May or between 10 May ...

P7L26 ?? which has to be acknowledged ?? What do you mean?

P9L3 You mean due to the fact that you have a larger signal from your analysis, if the phase of the tide remains locked during the analysis period?
Perhaps: due to phase variations over the particular month analyzed
(Instrument noise should not influence the outcome, if you have a sufficient number of independent data)

P9L4 ... intervals (dashed and dotted lines) ... reveals large ...
(Order 30%; for "huge" I would expect an order of magnitude at least)

P9L10 On the contrary omit, there is no contradiction

P9L14 restricted to tides*;* also other

P9L15 That's a bit short, perhaps better:
... included in the data. For instance, amplitudes may include some gravity waves which have observed ground-based periods larger than the Coriolis period but are Doppler shifted to intrinsic frequencies in the range of gravity waves.

P9L17 You are quite frequently first giving the result and explaining it afterwards. O.k., if you have a complicated explanation, but disrupts the flow for shorter arguments. Better switch the order of the sentences:

... shifted to intrinsic frequencies in the range of gravity waves. The composite analysis ... Therefore, gravity waves average ... The occurency of low frequency gravity waves hence leads to higher amplitudes in the ...

P10L4 For comparison, ...

P11L16 reveal -> investigate

P11L20 In general, ECMWF data exhibit similar structures than the lidar data shown in Fig. 1. Temperature deviations ...

P11L23/L26 However, ...

P11L28 That sentence is a conclusion not a contradiction Hence, ... Accordingly, ...
... information of the background atmosphere and to a lessser degree also for the wave fields ...

P11L31 Therefore, should be something like To this purpose, ... , but better omit

P12L13 ... planetary wave activity in the stratosphere is ...

P13L10 reliable -> likely

P13L11 a relevant

P14L3 for several consecutive days ... an exceptionally long

P14L8 looking at

P14L10 of different types of atmospheric

P14L11 Between altitudes ...

P14L11 shows an increase as expected due to the decreasing air density
I was wondering that you did not comment on that earlier. Between 35 and 47km, i.e. over less than two scale heights you find an increase of more than a factor of 4. Since the conservative quantities are proportional to the amplitudes squared, they should hence increase by less than a factor e= 2.7, so actually amplitudes increase more strongly than a conservative propagation would let expect.

P14L12 The not visible statement is only true for wavelet, though you have some indication also for the composite analysis. Please be more precise.

P15L11 estimation -> assumption illustrate -> exhibit / show

P16L1 In this study, later on the amplitude is indeed

P16L10 hypothesis / mechanism

P16L11 In which time? "these" refers to? Please reformulate the sentence. And swap sentences with the result as the last sentence (cf. above)

P16L15 correlated -> occurs at the same time is related to

P16L16 estimate -> propose

P16L22 The way the sentence is written I was looking for four curves. Please reorder and reformulate e.g.:
... temporally filtered data are investigated. Figure 11 shows GWs for ... and tides briefly afterwards. These are the times when ...

P18L13 Are you concretely planning to do this? Otherwise maybe reformulate:
In order to investigate this further more sophisticated model studies are required which can use our observations as a bench mark test.

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ED: Publish subject to minor revisions (review by editor) (17 Nov 2017) by Jörg Gumbel

AR by Kathrin Baumgarten on behalf of the Authors (22 Nov 2017) Author's response

ED: Publish as is (05 Dec 2017) by Jörg Gumbel

Short summary

Gravity waves (GWs) as well as solar tides are a key driving mechanism for the circulation in the Earth's atmosphere. The temporal variation of these waves is studied using a record long 10-day continuous Rayleigh–Mie–Raman lidar sounding at midlatitudes. This data set shows a large variability of these waves on timescales of a few days and therefore provides new insights into wave intermittency phenomena, which can help to improve model simulations.