Impact of the eruption of Mt Pinatubo on the chemical composition of the stratosphere

Kilian, Markus; Brinkop, Sabine; Jöckel, Patrick

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-20-11697-2020

Articles | Volume 20, issue 20

https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-20-11697-2020

© Author(s) 2020. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Special issue:

The Modular Earth Submodel System (MESSy) (ACP/GMD inter-journal...

https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-20-11697-2020

© Author(s) 2020. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 20, issue 20

Research article

|

16 Oct 2020

Research article |

| 16 Oct 2020

Impact of the eruption of Mt Pinatubo on the chemical composition of the stratosphere

Markus Kilian, Sabine Brinkop, and Patrick Jöckel

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Final revised paper (published on 16 Oct 2020)
Preprint (discussion started on 30 Mar 2020)

Interactive discussion

Status: closed

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

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- Supplement

SC1: 'Misinterpretation of Aquila et al. (2013)', Valentina Aquila, 06 Apr 2020
- AC1: 'Reply to the comment of Valentina Aquila', Markus Kilian, 08 Apr 2020
RC1: 'Review of Kilian et al.', Anonymous Referee #1, 14 Apr 2020
- AC2: 'reply to comments of referee #1', Markus Kilian, 05 May 2020
RC2: 'Artifact from nudging in a too large region?', Anonymous Referee #2, 28 Apr 2020
- AC4: 'reply to comments of referee#2', Markus Kilian, 24 Jun 2020
SC2: 'Concerm about simulated volcanic heating', Ales Kuchar, 25 May 2020
- AC3: 'Reply to the comment of Ales Kuchar', Markus Kilian, 24 Jun 2020

Peer-review completion

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

AR by Markus Kilian on behalf of the Authors (25 Jun 2020) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Referee Nomination & Report Request started (30 Jun 2020) by Farahnaz Khosrawi

RR by Anonymous Referee #2 (16 Jul 2020)

Suggestions for revision or reasons for rejection

General:

The manuscript has improved a lot concerning clarifications and additional information.
It is however odd that some improvements were promised in the open discussion but are
not included in the revised manuscript. This holds for the technical corrections, merging of
figures, but also remarks on uncertainties in water vapor. The discussion of the impact of
nudging on the results in the region of interest should be longer including sentences of
the open discussion. The supplement of L\"offler et al. (2016) points to the fact
that calculated temperature differences are dampened by nudging when comparing the
nudged and the free running simulations. Nudging introduces always additional heating
and cooling terms, sometimes in an indirect way via dynamical coupling, even if the global
average temperature at the level is not nudged. This view is shared with the expert for
the ECHAM nudging code, Ingo Kirchner of Free University of Berlin. Nudging up to 100hPa,
i.e. below the region where the aerosol heating occurs, together with weak QBO nudging,
would be a cleaner solution and avoids the noisy and expensive free running ensembles.

Specific:

Page 2, line 16: skip 'heterogeneous' here. The gas-phase reactions matter in this context (line 20 O.K.).

Page 3, line 8: methane is not of interest here because its effects are small.

Page 4, line 11f: spell out all instrument names.

Page 6, line 6f: Nabro is a 'medium-size eruption' in the literature. Its SO$_2$-plume
extends into the lower stratosphere up to about 19km as seen by the MIPAS instrument.

Page 6, line 26ff: This is misleading. Nudging perturbs the calculated temperature changes
but not the aerosol heating rates. The temperature change in the free running pair is
larger than in the nudged pairs (about 40\%, Figs. S1 and S2 of
L\"offler et al., 2016). Please reword and extend this part.

Page 8, line 8: better say 'Antarctic polar cap'. Are the corresponding data for the northern
hemisphere not available? It would be better to show both hemispheres in Fig. 4.

Page 9, line 12: old text was better (both signs!).

Figure 12: point to the increase in ozone loss by halogens in 2 springs (late winters) in NH in text.

Figure 15: which latitude range is that? Poleward of 60 degrees?

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ED: Publish subject to minor revisions (review by editor) (16 Jul 2020) by Farahnaz Khosrawi

AR by Markus Kilian on behalf of the Authors (13 Aug 2020) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Publish subject to technical corrections (18 Aug 2020) by Farahnaz Khosrawi

AR by Markus Kilian on behalf of the Authors (18 Aug 2020) Author's response Manuscript

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Short summary

After the volcanic eruption of Mt Pinatubo in 1991, ozone decreased in the tropics and increased in the midlatitudes and polar regions for 1 year. The change in the ozone column is solely a result of the volcanic heating, followed by an ozone decrease in the higher latitudes. This is caused by the volcanic aerosol, which changes the heterogeneous chemistry and thus the catalytic ozone loss cycles. Vertical transport of water vapour is enhanced by volcanic heating and increases methane.