Reducing uncertainties in satellite estimates of aerosol–cloud interactions over the subtropical ocean by integrating vertically resolved aerosol observations

Painemal, David; Chang, Fu-Lung; Ferrare, Richard; Burton, Sharon; Li, Zhujun; Smith Jr., William L.; Minnis, Patrick; Feng, Yan; Clayton, Marian

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-20-7167-2020

Articles | Volume 20, issue 12

https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-20-7167-2020

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

https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-20-7167-2020

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

Articles | Volume 20, issue 12

Research article

|

22 Jun 2020

Research article |

| 22 Jun 2020

Reducing uncertainties in satellite estimates of aerosol–cloud interactions over the subtropical ocean by integrating vertically resolved aerosol observations

David Painemal, Fu-Lung Chang, Richard Ferrare, Sharon Burton, Zhujun Li, William L. Smith Jr., Patrick Minnis, Yan Feng, and Marian Clayton

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Final revised paper (published on 22 Jun 2020)
Preprint (discussion started on 06 Nov 2019)

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 #2, 27 Nov 2019
- AC2: 'Response to Reviewer 2', David Painemal, 13 Feb 2020
RC2: 'Review of Painemal et al', Anonymous Referee #1, 01 Jan 2020
- AC1: 'Response to Reviewer 1', David Painemal, 13 Feb 2020

Peer-review completion

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

AR by David Painemal on behalf of the Authors (11 Mar 2020) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Referee Nomination & Report Request started (27 Mar 2020) by Nikos Hatzianastassiou

RR by Anonymous Referee #1 (13 Apr 2020)

RR by Anonymous Referee #2 (13 Apr 2020)

ED: Publish subject to technical corrections (10 May 2020) by Nikos Hatzianastassiou

AR by David Painemal on behalf of the Authors (11 May 2020) Author's response Manuscript

Short summary

Aerosol–cloud interactions (ACIs) are the most uncertain aspect of anthropogenic forcing. Although satellites provide the observational dataset for the global ACI quantification, retrievals are limited to vertically integrated quantities (e.g., aerosol optical depth – AOD), which are typically used as an aerosol proxy. This study demonstrates that matching vertically resolved aerosol from CALIOP at the cloud-layer height with satellite cloud retrievals reduces uncertainties in ACI estimates.