Processes influencing lower stratospheric water vapour in monsoon anticyclones: insights from Lagrangian modelling

Plaza, Nuria Pilar; Podglajen, Aurélien; Peña-Ortiz, Cristina; Ploeger, Felix

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-21-9585-2021

Articles | Volume 21, issue 12

https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-21-9585-2021

© Author(s) 2021. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-21-9585-2021

© Author(s) 2021. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 21, issue 12

Research article

|

28 Jun 2021

Research article |

| 28 Jun 2021

Processes influencing lower stratospheric water vapour in monsoon anticyclones: insights from Lagrangian modelling

Nuria Pilar Plaza, Aurélien Podglajen, Cristina Peña-Ortiz, and Felix Ploeger

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Final revised paper (published on 28 Jun 2021)
Preprint (discussion started on 27 Oct 2020)

Interactive discussion

Status: closed

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

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- Supplement

RC1: 'Review of ‘The efficiency of transport into the stratosphere via the Asian and North American summer monsoon circulation” by Yan, Konopka, Ploeger, etc.', Anonymous Referee #1, 17 Nov 2020
- AC1: 'Reply on RC1', Nuria Pilar Plaza Martin, 10 Mar 2021
RC2: 'comments on manuscript acp-2020-1010', Anonymous Referee #2, 01 Dec 2020
- AC2: 'Reply on RC2', Nuria Pilar Plaza Martin, 10 Mar 2021

Peer-review completion

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

AR by Nuria Pilar Plaza Martin on behalf of the Authors (15 Mar 2021) Author's response Author's tracked changes Manuscript

ED: Referee Nomination & Report Request started (15 Mar 2021) by Jianzhong Ma

RR by Anonymous Referee #2 (27 Mar 2021)

Suggestions for revision or reasons for rejection

I see the authors’ great efforts to improve the paper, and most of my comments are addressed by the authors properly. There remains one major comment in this paper. I believe this paper will be suitable for publication after resolving this issue.

Major comments

#1: to RC1 comment 4 and RC2 comment 5

Using different grid boxes does not solve the problem of underestimate of water vapor, when previous empty bins appears over the region of high values. The Lagrangian trajectory filling model can successfully use the statistics of a lot of parcels to represent a value of a grid box relies on two keys: 1. The properties of each grid box is basically uniform; 2. The number of air parcels are large enough to get statistically significant result. So, if the authors want to evaluate the performance of a LTF model, at least there should be large enough number of air parcels.
The level 360 K is too close to the zero diabatic heating level, so many parcels descend and are removed after initiation. In many paper using LFT model, they use a different strategy that initiate the parcels above local diabatic heating rate, but no lower than 360 K (Schoeberl et al., 2013; Wang et al., 2019). They mentioned that over the Asian monsoon region, the initiation level would be about 370 K. To increase the number of parcels, this method is worth trying. Or just try to initiate the parcels at 370 K would also be helpful to improve the number of air parcels in the LFT model thus improve the reliability of this paper.

Schoeberl, M. R., Dessler, A. E. and Wang, T.: Modeling upper tropospheric and lower stratospheric water vapor anomalies, Atmos. Chem. Phys., 13(15), 7783–7793, doi:10.5194/acp-13-7783-2013, 2013.
Wang, X., Dessler, A. E., Schoeberl, M. R., Yu, W. and Wang, T.: Impact of convectively lofted ice on the seasonal cycle of water vapor in the tropical tropopause layer, Atmos. Chem. Phys., 19(23), 14621–14636, doi:10.5194/acp-19-14621-2019, 2019.

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ED: Reconsider after major revisions (05 Apr 2021) by Jianzhong Ma

AR by Nuria Pilar Plaza Martin on behalf of the Authors (17 May 2021) Author's response Author's tracked changes Manuscript

ED: Publish as is (19 May 2021) by Jianzhong Ma

Short summary

We study the role of different processes in setting the lower stratospheric water vapour. We find that mechanisms involving ice microphysics and small-scale mixing produce the strongest increase in water vapour, in particular over the Asian Monsoon. Small-scale mixing has a special relevance as it improves the agreement with observations at seasonal and intra-seasonal timescales, contrary to the North American Monsoon case, in which large-scale temperatures still dominate its variability.