Cloud feedbacks in extratropical cyclones: insight from long-term satellite data and high-resolution global simulations

McCoy, Daniel T.; Field, Paul R.; Elsaesser, Gregory S.; Bodas-Salcedo, Alejandro; Kahn, Brian H.; Zelinka, Mark D.; Kodama, Chihiro; Mauritsen, Thorsten; Vanniere, Benoit; Roberts, Malcolm; Vidale, Pier L.; Saint-Martin, David; Voldoire, Aurore; Haarsma, Rein; Hill, Adrian; Shipway, Ben; Wilkinson, Jonathan

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-19-1147-2019

Articles | Volume 19, issue 2

https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-19-1147-2019

© Author(s) 2019. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-19-1147-2019

© Author(s) 2019. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 19, issue 2

Research article

|

30 Jan 2019

Research article |

| 30 Jan 2019

Cloud feedbacks in extratropical cyclones: insight from long-term satellite data and high-resolution global simulations

Daniel T. McCoy, Paul R. Field, Gregory S. Elsaesser, Alejandro Bodas-Salcedo, Brian H. Kahn, Mark D. Zelinka, Chihiro Kodama, Thorsten Mauritsen, Benoit Vanniere, Malcolm Roberts, Pier L. Vidale, David Saint-Martin, Aurore Voldoire, Rein Haarsma, Adrian Hill, Ben Shipway, and Jonathan Wilkinson

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Final revised paper (published on 30 Jan 2019)
Supplement to the final revised paper
Preprint (discussion started on 16 Aug 2018)
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Interactive discussion

Status: closed

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

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- Supplement

RC1: 'Review of Manuscript', Anonymous Referee #1, 18 Sep 2018
- AC1: 'Response to reviewers 1 and 2', Daniel McCoy, 23 Nov 2018
RC2: 'Review of Manuscript', Anonymous Referee #2, 19 Sep 2018

Peer-review completion

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

AR by Daniel McCoy on behalf of the Authors (23 Nov 2018) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Referee Nomination & Report Request started (28 Nov 2018) by Johannes Quaas

RR by Anonymous Referee #2 (14 Dec 2018)

RR by Anonymous Referee #1 (13 Jan 2019)

Suggestions for revision or reasons for rejection

The authors have responded comprehensively to my comments and have made many good modifications to the text based on them and those of the other reviewers. As a result the contents of the manuscript is improved. Having said that, some of the main issues I highlighted in my first review remain. The manuscript remains very long, it constantly mixes results and discussion, and it makes what is in my view inappropriate use of supplementary material. As all of these issues are about style, rather than substance, I feel the manuscript can be published as is, even though a better manuscript could be produced.

1) Length - In my first review I had noted that the manuscript was very long with 26 pages and 28 figures. It is now 24 pages and 27 figures. The two page saving is from moving the model description into the supplementary material. So in essence, nothing has changed. I still think that by improving the writing and focussing on the main argument, the manuscript could be significantly shorter, but if the journal is happy with the length, I am not inclined to push harder.

2) Supplementary Figures - The manuscript makes what is in my view inappropriate use of supplementary material. I believe examples for an appropriate use is showing NH figures when the paper is focussing on the SH. It’s also appropriate to show a model mean figure in the main text and show every model’s figure in the supplement. I do not believe it is sensible for major arguments in the paper to rely on supplementary figures. Here are the first dozen or so figures referenced in the paper in order of appearance: S1, S2, S2, S3, S3, 1, S3, S4, 2, 2, S6, S7. From this it is evident that the supplementary figures carry the entire first half of the results section and a must be anything but supplementary. I think many of them are used to hide the true length of the manuscript, which is still caused by a lack of focus.

3) Mixing of discussion and result - The authors continue to mix discussion and results as they walk through the results section. That is their choice, but I still feel it gets into the way of the argument. The fact that so many supplementary figures are cited early on is related to this, as it is usually the discussions that are often supported by the supplementary figures. I still feel a clean separation of presenting results and discussing them in a separate section will both shorten and sharpen the manuscript.

As mentioned above, while I feel the manuscript could be further improved, most of the improvements are on style. It can therefore be published as is unless the authors wish to make further improvements.

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ED: Publish subject to technical corrections (17 Jan 2019) by Johannes Quaas

AR by Daniel McCoy on behalf of the Authors (21 Jan 2019) Author's response Manuscript

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Short summary

The largest single source of uncertainty in the climate sensitivity predicted by global climate models is how much low-altitude clouds change as the climate warms. Models predict that the amount of liquid within and the brightness of low-altitude clouds increase in the extratropics with warming. We show that increased fluxes of moisture into extratropical storms in the midlatitudes explain the majority of the observed trend and the modeled increase in liquid water within these storms.