Ice crystal characterization in cirrus clouds: a sun-tracking camera system and automated detection algorithm for halo displays

Forster, Linda; Seefeldner, Meinhard; Wiegner, Matthias; Mayer, Bernhard

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/amt-10-2499-2017

Articles | Volume 10, issue 7

https://doi.org/10.5194/amt-10-2499-2017

© Author(s) 2017. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/amt-10-2499-2017

© Author(s) 2017. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.

Articles | Volume 10, issue 7

Research article

|

17 Jul 2017

Research article |

| 17 Jul 2017

Ice crystal characterization in cirrus clouds: a sun-tracking camera system and automated detection algorithm for halo displays

Linda Forster, Meinhard Seefeldner, Matthias Wiegner, and Bernhard Mayer

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Final revised paper (published on 17 Jul 2017)
Supplement to the final revised paper
Preprint (discussion started on 17 Mar 2017)

Interactive discussion

Status: closed

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

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- Supplement

RC1: 'Review Report', Anonymous Referee #1, 19 Mar 2017
- AC1: 'Reply to review report of referee #1', Linda Forster, 24 May 2017
RC2: 'Review of Forster et al.', Bastiaan van Diedenhoven, 30 Mar 2017
- AC2: 'Reply to review report of referee #2', Linda Forster, 24 May 2017
RC3: 'see attached pdf', Anonymous Referee #3, 05 Apr 2017
- RC4: 'Reply to review concerns', Bastiaan van Diedenhoven, 05 Apr 2017
  - RC5: 'reply to comment', Anonymous Referee #3, 06 Apr 2017
- AC3: 'Reply to review report of referee #3', Linda Forster, 24 May 2017

Peer-review completion

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

AR by Linda Forster on behalf of the Authors (30 May 2017) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Publish subject to minor revisions (Editor review) (04 Jun 2017) by Murray Hamilton

Dear Authors
Re manuscript "Ice Crystal Characterization in Cirrus Clouds: ..."

Thankyou for your submission to AMT, which I find to quite an impressive piece of work. There is however a number of concerns that need to be addressed before I can finally accept the manuscript for publication. Could you please address these concerns listed below.
best regards
Murray Hamilton
(Assoc. Ed.)

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It appears that referee #3's comments have been ignored - could you please provide a list of how these concerns have been addressed. Many of them are, to my mind, correct and need little editing of the text to address. If you cannot address some of them, you should say why.

For example:
I don't believe that you have adequately addressed the concern of referee #3 about the periods over which data was collected and their respective locations. The abstract says only that the analysed data were collected near Munich, yet section 2.1 refers to data that was analysed and came from Cabauw. Later the paper refers to analysis of data obtained near Munich.

Also, referee #1 is correct in that 150.000 should be written as 150,000 - i.e. with a comma. The latter is correct usage in English but this shouldn't be left to the typesetters, as "150.000" means one hundred and fifty, and they won't know what you actually mean.

I also have a few editorial comments ...

You write "As a measure for the colorfulness of the halo ...". "Colorfulness" is not a word in English, though perhaps it should be. Anyway a better way to express this is "As a measure of the separation of color in the halo ..."

"Tab. 3 shows the confusion ..." . You should not start a sentence with an abbreviation. This leads me to another issue regarding the tables; the tables need to be connected to the text with references and a short description (in the text). I cannot find this for tables 2 or 4.

What is "dthteta" in figure 11?

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AR by Linda Forster on behalf of the Authors (06 Jun 2017) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Publish as is (07 Jun 2017) by Murray Hamilton

Short summary

Halo displays are produced by scattering of sunlight by smooth, hexagonal ice crystals. Consequently, the presence of a halo should contain information on particle shape. This study presents HaloCam, a novel sun-tracking camera system, and an automated detection algorithm to collect and evaluate long-term halo observations. Two-year HaloCam observations revealed that about 25 % of the detected cirrus clouds occurred together with a 22° halo indicating the presence of smooth, hexagonal crystals.