the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
| 31 Aug 2023
DCMEX coordinated aircraft and ground observations: Microphysics, aerosol and dynamics during cumulonimbus development
Abstract. Sensitivity of global temperature to rising CO2 remains highly uncertain. One of the greatest sources of uncertainty arises from cloud feedbacks associated with deep convective anvils. For deep convective clouds, their growth and characteristics are substantially controlled by mixed-phase microphysical processes. However, there remain several questions about cloud microphysical processes, especially in deep, mixed-phase clouds. Meanwhile, the representation of these processes in global climate models is limited. As such, the Deep Convective Microphysics Experiment (DCMEX) has undertaken an in-situ aircraft and ground-based measurement campaign. The data, combined with operational satellite observations and modelling, will help establish new understanding from the smallest, cloud and aerosol particle scales through to the largest, cloud-system and climate scales. DCMEX is one of four projects in the UK Natural Environment Research Council, Uncertainty in climate sensitivity due to clouds, CloudSense programme. Along with other CloudSense projects, DCMEX will support progress in reducing the uncertainty in cloud feedbacks and equilibrium climate sensitivity. This paper lays out the underpinning dataset from the DCMEX summer 2022 field campaign. Its content describes the coordinated operation and technical details of the broad range of aerosol, cloud physics, radar, thermodynamics, dynamics, electric field and weather instruments deployed. In addition, an overview of the characteristics of campaign cases illustrates the complementary operational observations available, as well as demonstrating the breadth of the campaign cases observed.
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RC1: 'Comment on essd-2023-303', Anonymous Referee #1, 03 Oct 2023
This manuscript offers an extensive compilation of data for cloud microphysics research. My own research focuses on the transformation of aerosols in the atmosphere, so I am more concerned about aerosol measurements on aircraft. I believe that the datasets from aerosol instruments have covered virtually all the key aspects of aerosol characteristics necessary for investigating aerosol-cloud interactions. The only concern to me is the sampling rates of these individual instruments and the methods to synchronize their measurements. It would help a lot if the authors could provide a summarizing figure (similar to Figure 4) showing the range of aerosol sizes and the corresponding sampling rates for aerosol measurements.
Citation: https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-2023-303-RC1 -
RC2: 'Comment on essd-2023-303', Anonymous Referee #2, 09 Dec 2023
The authors describe aircraft and ground observations during the DCMEX campaign in 2022. The article contains information about the campaign operations and the instrumentation on the ground and deployed on the FAAM BAe-146 aircraft.
The manuscript and the data published along with it fit the scope of ESSD very well. The data set presents a unique set of airborne and ground based observations microphysics of deep convective clouds. This has the potential to provide valuable bases for future analysis. However, after reviewing both the manuscript and the data, the aim of this publication is not entirely clear to me. As a general remark: I am reviewing the manuscript and the data from the standpoint of a potential user who wasn't part of the project and would like to do some analyses with these data sets.
The paper and the published data read to me as a loose collection of information about the campaign. There is no clear structure and the published data sets don't appear to be especially treated for this publication and for future users. The data sets all have some standard format without much documentation or description on what to find where, version information, development steps, quality control measures. I would expect the data sets that are published along with an ESSD publication to be more adapted and user friendly as is currently the case.
I would recommend publication only after a major restructuring of the paper and substantial improvements on the presentation and documentation of the data sets.
General remarks about the manuscript:
The aim of this paper is not clear. I think the paper suffers from too many points of view that the authors tried to include in this paper. Some examples:
- The abstract mentions the relation of the DCMEX project to other research projects. This might not be necessary to understand the content of the paper. Or, at least, this doesn't need to be part of the abstract as this is not really a topic of the rest of the paper.
- lines 115 to 126: a lot of details about the flight operations are given, without these playing another role in the rest of the manuscript. These kinds of decisions are part of every aircraft campaign. Why is this level of detail necessary for future data users?
- Section 3 (Instrumentation): this is a very long section with a lot of details on the measurement principles of all instruments deployed during the campaign. Especially, subsections 3.1.1, 3.1.2, and 3.1.3 seem unnecessarily detailed. Given that a lot of instrument sections contain references to previous publications, these descriptions can be shortened with referencing papers that describe the instruments in more detail to help readability of this manuscript. In addition, only data from a fraction of the instruments listed in this paper is actually published along with it (see comments below). This left me confused about the goal of this instrument list.
- The concluding chapter doesn't really conclude the paper but opens up another topic with listing a lot of potential future analysis opportunities. Which could definitely be part of a concluding chapter. However, without any real conclusion, the reader is left wondering, what paper was all about.
Remarks about the aircraft data sets:
- Only data from a small fraction of the instruments that were listed in the manuscript are actually published. There isn't explained anywhere. After reading the paper, I would have expected data from all instruments to be published as assets to the paper.
- No overview was given in the text which kind of files are uploaded or how to navigate the folder structure.
- What do different versions or r mean? Where is the version history so that users can assess which version they would like to use and what was changed between the versions?
- The bulk download of data in the CERES website is not working. However, this might have more to do with the data base and something the authors can't control.
- Where is data from flight c315? And in turn, why is flight c296 part of the DCMX data record?
- There are a lot of files in archive without any explanation about their generation and what they contain. For example, what is flight-cst_faam_20220806_r0_c313.yaml? What is core_faam_20220730_v005_r0_c307.nc?Remarks about the radar data sets:
- The tar.gz files have too many unnecessary subfolders (DCMEX/SR1/data//files...).
- The tar.gz files are huge, not everyone is interested in all 41 different versions. Those should be split up into either different files. And again, no explanation is given about the differences in these versions.
- The radar data files contain a lot of calibration data which is probably unnecessary for most users. And without any explanation either in a publication or in the netcdf files, it is hard to judge which variables one needs. I would suggest to either remove the bulk of the calibration constants, etc. or to substantially improve the description in the netcdf attributes of these files.
- Data from the time periods 20220720-20220727 and 20220803-20220804 are missing without an explanation.
- There are a lot of unnecessary entries for a ground based radar (altitude_agl only nan, eastward velocity, ...).
- This data set is not designed for the end user but for the radar specialist. In the current state, the published data is not usable for someone not part of the project or who is well versed in radar data analysis. I would expect a data set that is published in ESSD, to be in a usable format for a wider community. This is not the case for the radar data right now. The data would need major restructuring along with a more detailed explanation of the published data in the manuscript.
- SR1 data is incomplete, PX1000 not published at all.Remarks about the data from automated cameras:
- I can't assess the quality of the camera images as they aren't published yet at the specified archive.
- Data needs to be published for me to review it!
- There are, however, videos published on Zenodo as assets to the paper. Why is there a mismatch between the link listed in Section 6 and the one given in the assets description?General comments about the manuscript:
- Unit formats in the text are all over the place. Some are missing spaces between number and unit, sometimes exponents are used, sometimes a '/'' in text for the same unit. Sometimes they are written in a formula environment, resulting in a different font.
- The text mentions a lot of instruments being operated together on the aircraft. Was there any sort of time correction and correlations done to ensure simultaneous observations?Specific comments on the manuscript:
- Figure 2: what do the dashed and solid lines depict?
- Figure 3: font size too small
- l 172: parentheses missing around citation Drewnick et al. (2005)
- l 278 and l 282: how was "in cloud" and "out of clouds" determined? Which quantities where used to determine this, as there is usually a gradual transition between free air and clouds.
- Figure 4: unit on the ordinate should be in proper SI format
- l 383 and 388: "hot-wire" and "hotwire"
- Sec 3.1.3 title: this section also contains camera images from the aircraft and not only wind, temperature and humidity.
- Sec 3.3: would be great to mention that all three radars operate on different wave lengths and thus observe different drop sizes.
- l 559: are the heights given above ground or above MSL?
- l 607: link to data set is incorrect
- l 611: why is the code for goes2go mentioned in the data and code section? I did not have the impression that this was part of the paper. If it is merely a code that was used, it should be properly cited but not mentioned in this section.
- Why is the repository (https://bitbucket.org/ncas_it/camera/src/DCMEX-Deployment) listed here? See my comment above (l 611). If the code was developed as part of this manuscript, it should be explained properly. If this is code that was used, please cite it as code.
- l 615: why is the code for the satellite pictures mentioned if they are not part of the paper? The data is not published either.Citation: https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-2023-303-RC2 -
AC1: 'Author responses to review comments on essd-2023-303', Declan Finney, 07 Feb 2024
The comment was uploaded in the form of a supplement: https://essd.copernicus.org/preprints/essd-2023-303/essd-2023-303-AC1-supplement.pdf
Status: closed
-
RC1: 'Comment on essd-2023-303', Anonymous Referee #1, 03 Oct 2023
This manuscript offers an extensive compilation of data for cloud microphysics research. My own research focuses on the transformation of aerosols in the atmosphere, so I am more concerned about aerosol measurements on aircraft. I believe that the datasets from aerosol instruments have covered virtually all the key aspects of aerosol characteristics necessary for investigating aerosol-cloud interactions. The only concern to me is the sampling rates of these individual instruments and the methods to synchronize their measurements. It would help a lot if the authors could provide a summarizing figure (similar to Figure 4) showing the range of aerosol sizes and the corresponding sampling rates for aerosol measurements.
Citation: https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-2023-303-RC1 -
RC2: 'Comment on essd-2023-303', Anonymous Referee #2, 09 Dec 2023
The authors describe aircraft and ground observations during the DCMEX campaign in 2022. The article contains information about the campaign operations and the instrumentation on the ground and deployed on the FAAM BAe-146 aircraft.
The manuscript and the data published along with it fit the scope of ESSD very well. The data set presents a unique set of airborne and ground based observations microphysics of deep convective clouds. This has the potential to provide valuable bases for future analysis. However, after reviewing both the manuscript and the data, the aim of this publication is not entirely clear to me. As a general remark: I am reviewing the manuscript and the data from the standpoint of a potential user who wasn't part of the project and would like to do some analyses with these data sets.
The paper and the published data read to me as a loose collection of information about the campaign. There is no clear structure and the published data sets don't appear to be especially treated for this publication and for future users. The data sets all have some standard format without much documentation or description on what to find where, version information, development steps, quality control measures. I would expect the data sets that are published along with an ESSD publication to be more adapted and user friendly as is currently the case.
I would recommend publication only after a major restructuring of the paper and substantial improvements on the presentation and documentation of the data sets.
General remarks about the manuscript:
The aim of this paper is not clear. I think the paper suffers from too many points of view that the authors tried to include in this paper. Some examples:
- The abstract mentions the relation of the DCMEX project to other research projects. This might not be necessary to understand the content of the paper. Or, at least, this doesn't need to be part of the abstract as this is not really a topic of the rest of the paper.
- lines 115 to 126: a lot of details about the flight operations are given, without these playing another role in the rest of the manuscript. These kinds of decisions are part of every aircraft campaign. Why is this level of detail necessary for future data users?
- Section 3 (Instrumentation): this is a very long section with a lot of details on the measurement principles of all instruments deployed during the campaign. Especially, subsections 3.1.1, 3.1.2, and 3.1.3 seem unnecessarily detailed. Given that a lot of instrument sections contain references to previous publications, these descriptions can be shortened with referencing papers that describe the instruments in more detail to help readability of this manuscript. In addition, only data from a fraction of the instruments listed in this paper is actually published along with it (see comments below). This left me confused about the goal of this instrument list.
- The concluding chapter doesn't really conclude the paper but opens up another topic with listing a lot of potential future analysis opportunities. Which could definitely be part of a concluding chapter. However, without any real conclusion, the reader is left wondering, what paper was all about.
Remarks about the aircraft data sets:
- Only data from a small fraction of the instruments that were listed in the manuscript are actually published. There isn't explained anywhere. After reading the paper, I would have expected data from all instruments to be published as assets to the paper.
- No overview was given in the text which kind of files are uploaded or how to navigate the folder structure.
- What do different versions or r mean? Where is the version history so that users can assess which version they would like to use and what was changed between the versions?
- The bulk download of data in the CERES website is not working. However, this might have more to do with the data base and something the authors can't control.
- Where is data from flight c315? And in turn, why is flight c296 part of the DCMX data record?
- There are a lot of files in archive without any explanation about their generation and what they contain. For example, what is flight-cst_faam_20220806_r0_c313.yaml? What is core_faam_20220730_v005_r0_c307.nc?Remarks about the radar data sets:
- The tar.gz files have too many unnecessary subfolders (DCMEX/SR1/data//files...).
- The tar.gz files are huge, not everyone is interested in all 41 different versions. Those should be split up into either different files. And again, no explanation is given about the differences in these versions.
- The radar data files contain a lot of calibration data which is probably unnecessary for most users. And without any explanation either in a publication or in the netcdf files, it is hard to judge which variables one needs. I would suggest to either remove the bulk of the calibration constants, etc. or to substantially improve the description in the netcdf attributes of these files.
- Data from the time periods 20220720-20220727 and 20220803-20220804 are missing without an explanation.
- There are a lot of unnecessary entries for a ground based radar (altitude_agl only nan, eastward velocity, ...).
- This data set is not designed for the end user but for the radar specialist. In the current state, the published data is not usable for someone not part of the project or who is well versed in radar data analysis. I would expect a data set that is published in ESSD, to be in a usable format for a wider community. This is not the case for the radar data right now. The data would need major restructuring along with a more detailed explanation of the published data in the manuscript.
- SR1 data is incomplete, PX1000 not published at all.Remarks about the data from automated cameras:
- I can't assess the quality of the camera images as they aren't published yet at the specified archive.
- Data needs to be published for me to review it!
- There are, however, videos published on Zenodo as assets to the paper. Why is there a mismatch between the link listed in Section 6 and the one given in the assets description?General comments about the manuscript:
- Unit formats in the text are all over the place. Some are missing spaces between number and unit, sometimes exponents are used, sometimes a '/'' in text for the same unit. Sometimes they are written in a formula environment, resulting in a different font.
- The text mentions a lot of instruments being operated together on the aircraft. Was there any sort of time correction and correlations done to ensure simultaneous observations?Specific comments on the manuscript:
- Figure 2: what do the dashed and solid lines depict?
- Figure 3: font size too small
- l 172: parentheses missing around citation Drewnick et al. (2005)
- l 278 and l 282: how was "in cloud" and "out of clouds" determined? Which quantities where used to determine this, as there is usually a gradual transition between free air and clouds.
- Figure 4: unit on the ordinate should be in proper SI format
- l 383 and 388: "hot-wire" and "hotwire"
- Sec 3.1.3 title: this section also contains camera images from the aircraft and not only wind, temperature and humidity.
- Sec 3.3: would be great to mention that all three radars operate on different wave lengths and thus observe different drop sizes.
- l 559: are the heights given above ground or above MSL?
- l 607: link to data set is incorrect
- l 611: why is the code for goes2go mentioned in the data and code section? I did not have the impression that this was part of the paper. If it is merely a code that was used, it should be properly cited but not mentioned in this section.
- Why is the repository (https://bitbucket.org/ncas_it/camera/src/DCMEX-Deployment) listed here? See my comment above (l 611). If the code was developed as part of this manuscript, it should be explained properly. If this is code that was used, please cite it as code.
- l 615: why is the code for the satellite pictures mentioned if they are not part of the paper? The data is not published either.Citation: https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-2023-303-RC2 -
AC1: 'Author responses to review comments on essd-2023-303', Declan Finney, 07 Feb 2024
The comment was uploaded in the form of a supplement: https://essd.copernicus.org/preprints/essd-2023-303/essd-2023-303-AC1-supplement.pdf
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