EARLINET observations of Saharan dust intrusions over the northern Mediterranean region (2014–2017): properties and impact on radiative forcing

Soupiona, Ourania; Papayannis, Alexandros; Kokkalis, Panagiotis; Foskinis, Romanos; Sánchez Hernández, Guadalupe; Ortiz-Amezcua, Pablo; Mylonaki, Maria; Papanikolaou, Christina-Anna; Papagiannopoulos, Nikolaos; Samaras, Stefanos; Groß, Silke; Mamouri, Rodanthi-Elisavet; Alados-Arboledas, Lucas; Amodeo, Aldo; Psiloglou, Basil

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-20-15147-2020

Articles | Volume 20, issue 23

https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-20-15147-2020

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

Special issue:

Dust aerosol measurements, modeling and multidisciplinary...

https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-20-15147-2020

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

Articles | Volume 20, issue 23

Research article

|

07 Dec 2020

Research article |

| 07 Dec 2020

EARLINET observations of Saharan dust intrusions over the northern Mediterranean region (2014–2017): properties and impact on radiative forcing

Ourania Soupiona, Alexandros Papayannis, Panagiotis Kokkalis, Romanos Foskinis, Guadalupe Sánchez Hernández, Pablo Ortiz-Amezcua, Maria Mylonaki, Christina-Anna Papanikolaou, Nikolaos Papagiannopoulos, Stefanos Samaras, Silke Groß, Rodanthi-Elisavet Mamouri, Lucas Alados-Arboledas, Aldo Amodeo, and Basil Psiloglou

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Final revised paper (published on 07 Dec 2020)
Preprint (discussion started on 01 Jul 2020)

Interactive discussion

Status: closed

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

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- Supplement

SC1: 'Dust Radiative effect within the atmospheric column', Konstantina Nakoudi, 12 Jul 2020
- AC1: 'Answer Dust RF within the atmospheric column', Ourania Soupiona, 24 Jul 2020
RC1: 'Review', Anonymous Referee #1, 25 Jul 2020
RC2: 'Comment to Soupiona et al.', Anonymous Referee #2, 04 Aug 2020

Peer-review completion

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

AR by Ourania Soupiona on behalf of the Authors (16 Sep 2020) Author's response

ED: Referee Nomination & Report Request started (24 Sep 2020) by Matthias Tesche

RR by Anonymous Referee #2 (05 Oct 2020)

Suggestions for revision or reasons for rejection

The authors have done a great job considering my comments. The manuscript has significantly improved. However, two minor clarification are needed before it can be published:

1. Line 347: “However, due to degradation of the spatial resolution in order to fit the fixed height levels of the OPAC dataset for the ARF simulations, these discrepancies in height were smoothed out.”
I do not understand this sentence. So you did not use the layer heights derived from model and lidar, but fixed ones from the OPAC data set? Please clarify!

2. I think the description of SphInX still need improvement:
a. “..to carry out microphysical retrievals from synthetic and real lidar data inputs..”
I guess what you mean is to carry out calculations from lidar data to obtain microphysical aerosol properties? Is this correct, the please write it more precise!
b. “CRI grid was narrowed down to [1.4, 1.5] for the Real part (RRI), and [0, 0.001, 0.005, 0.01]”. What do the values in the brackets mean? Do you only use 2 values for the RRI and 4 for the IRI? Please explain correctly without using mathematic notations which have not been explained.
c. Can you justify, why one can narrow down the CRI to the grid you use? Is this based on the properties of the aerosol type?
d. “…in order to avoid retrieving less realistic size distributions that suggest smoother representations and have undesired systematic behavior. “
What does this sentence mean? And what is an undesired behaviour? It sounds like data manipulation…..please write more precisely.
e. “imposed measurement error is reasonably contained”
What does this mean? Please state correctly.
All in all, I still have not really understood what and how you have done the calculations of the aerosol microphysical properties. Please revise this paragraph.

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ED: Publish subject to minor revisions (review by editor) (05 Oct 2020) by Matthias Tesche

AR by Ourania Soupiona on behalf of the Authors (07 Oct 2020) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Publish as is (08 Oct 2020) by Matthias Tesche

Short summary

51 dust events over the Mediterranean from EARLINET were studied regarding the aerosol geometrical, optical and microphysical properties and radiative forcing. We found δ_p532 values of 0.24–0.28, LR₅₃₂ values of 49–52 sr and AOT₅₃₂ of 0.11–0.40. The aerosol mixing state was also examined. Depending on the dust properties, intensity and solar zenith angle, the estimated solar radiative forcing ranged from −59 to −22 W m⁻² at the surface and from −24 to −1 W m⁻² at the TOA (cooling effect).