Downward cloud venting of the central African biomass burning plume during the West Africa summer monsoon

Dajuma, Alima; Ogunjobi, Kehinde O.; Vogel, Heike; Knippertz, Peter; Silué, Siélé; N'Datchoh, Evelyne Touré; Yoboué, Véronique; Vogel, Bernhard

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-20-5373-2020

Articles | Volume 20, issue 9

https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-20-5373-2020

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

Special issue:

Results of the project "Dynamics–aerosol–chemistry–cloud...

https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-20-5373-2020

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

Articles | Volume 20, issue 9

Research article

|

07 May 2020

Research article |

| 07 May 2020

Downward cloud venting of the central African biomass burning plume during the West Africa summer monsoon

Alima Dajuma, Kehinde O. Ogunjobi, Heike Vogel, Peter Knippertz, Siélé Silué, Evelyne Touré N'Datchoh, Véronique Yoboué, and Bernhard Vogel

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Final revised paper (published on 07 May 2020)
Preprint (discussion started on 09 Aug 2019)

Interactive discussion

Status: closed

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

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RC1: 'Reviewer Comments', Anonymous Referee #1, 19 Aug 2019
- AC1: 'Interactive comment on “Cloud-venting induced downward mixing of the Central African biomass burning plume during the West Africa summer monsoon” by Alima Dajuma et al.', Alima Dajuma, 15 Feb 2020
RC2: 'Review of Dajuma et al.', Anonymous Referee #2, 19 Sep 2019
- AC2: 'Interactive comment on “Cloud-venting induced downward mixing of the Central African biomass burning plume during the West Africa summer monsoon” by Alima Dajuma et al.', Alima Dajuma, 15 Feb 2020

Peer-review completion

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

AR by Alima Dajuma on behalf of the Authors (16 Feb 2020) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Referee Nomination & Report Request started (26 Feb 2020) by Susan van den Heever

RR by Anonymous Referee #2 (26 Feb 2020)

RR by Anonymous Referee #1 (08 Mar 2020)

ED: Publish subject to minor revisions (review by editor) (18 Mar 2020) by Susan van den Heever

AR by Alima Dajuma on behalf of the Authors (23 Mar 2020) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Publish subject to minor revisions (review by editor) (31 Mar 2020) by Susan van den Heever

Dear Dr. Dajuma,

I have several very minor comments remaining regarding Figure 12 that should be addressed. Once these changes have been made, I intend to accept your manuscript for publication. The concerns are related to Figure 12. Firstly, your caption does not adequately describe the various components of Figure 12, including what the different dotted and solid lines are supposed to the indicate, what the yellow arrow indicates, what the 'X' within the circle (flow into the page) actually indicates, the circular arrows and so on. Clearly while most of these could be correctly guessed, and while some of these are addressed in the text, such as the yellow arrow, your captions should include all of the symbols used within the figure. Then, I do have some concerns that in your middle panel you have downdrafts without any precipitation. Can downdrafts exist without precipitation below cloud base? Yes, they can, and one such mechanism, for example, would be the case in which all of the precipitation fully evaporates just as the downdraft exits cloud base (there are other mechanisms too). However, it is far more likely that there is still some precipitation evident below cloud base. I would therefore recommend that you indicate the presence of light precipitation, especially as you have included the presence of heavy precipitation in the right panel. If you purposefully do not want to indicate the presence of light precipitation, then it would make sense to include a statement in the paper explaining why there is no precipitation and as to which process is responsible for the downdrafts and associated vertical transport into the boundary (as there are a number of processes that could be driving these). In this way, it makes the figure more consistent.

I look forward to sending your revised manuscript to press.

Best wishes,
Sue

_______________________________________
Susan C. van den Heever
Professor
Department of Atmospheric Science
Colorado State University
(970) 491-8501
https://vandenheever.atmos.colostate.edu/
_______________________________________

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AR by Alima Dajuma on behalf of the Authors (03 Apr 2020) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Publish as is (04 Apr 2020) by Susan van den Heever

AR by Alima Dajuma on behalf of the Authors (04 Apr 2020) Manuscript

Short summary

A modeling study through COSMO-ART was used to investigate the implication of downward mixing induced by clouds in transporting biomass burning aerosols from central and southern Africa located between 2 and 4 km into the PBL over southern West Africa. Results showed that individual mixing events south of the coast of Côte d’Ivoire due to mid-level convective clouds injects part of the biomass burning plume into the PBL. 15 % of CO mass from the 2–4 km layer is mixed below 1 km.