Revisiting particle sizing using greyscale optical array probes: evaluation using laboratory experiments and synthetic data

O'Shea, Sebastian J.; Crosier, Jonathan; Dorsey, James; Schledewitz, Waldemar; Crawford, Ian; Borrmann, Stephan; Cotton, Richard; Bansemer, Aaron

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/amt-12-3067-2019

Articles | Volume 12, issue 6

https://doi.org/10.5194/amt-12-3067-2019

© Author(s) 2019. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/amt-12-3067-2019

© Author(s) 2019. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 12, issue 6

Research article

|

06 Jun 2019

Research article |

| 06 Jun 2019

Revisiting particle sizing using greyscale optical array probes: evaluation using laboratory experiments and synthetic data

Sebastian J. O'Shea, Jonathan Crosier, James Dorsey, Waldemar Schledewitz, Ian Crawford, Stephan Borrmann, Richard Cotton, and Aaron Bansemer

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Final revised paper (published on 06 Jun 2019)
Preprint (discussion started on 07 Jan 2019)

Interactive discussion

Status: closed

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

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- Supplement

RC1: 'Reviewer # 1', Darrel Baumgardner, 28 Jan 2019
- AC1: 'author response', Sebastian O'Shea, 24 Mar 2019
RC2: 'accept with minor revisions', Jeff French, 06 Feb 2019
- AC1: 'author response', Sebastian O'Shea, 24 Mar 2019
RC4: 'Corrected Review 3 Comments File Posed', David Delene, 18 Feb 2019
- AC1: 'author response', Sebastian O'Shea, 24 Mar 2019

Peer-review completion

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

AR by Sebastian O'Shea on behalf of the Authors (24 Mar 2019) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Referee Nomination & Report Request started (25 Mar 2019) by Andrew Sayer

RR by Jeff French (20 Apr 2019)

RR by David Delene (29 Apr 2019)

ED: Publish subject to minor revisions (review by editor) (03 May 2019) by Andrew Sayer

Dear authors,

Thank you for your revised submission; both reviewers feel that you have addressed their concerns, and I concur. One has a small number of further comments which I'd appreciate if you could address; following this I will be pleased to accept your study for publication in AMT (I don't believe these comments will warrant another round of peer-review).

Please accept my apologies for the delay in evaluating your revision, due to some travel of mine away from the office. The comments are below - please let me know if you have any questions, and I'll go through your next version as soon as I see it.

Best wishes,

Andrew

General Comments:
Very nice work that has a mix of lab results, models, and field measurements.

Abstract states that specific recommendation are made about greyscale OAP’s. It would be nice to have the abstract directly state the main recommendation. Maybe the main conclusion is that monoscale OAP are unreliable below < 100 um and greyscale OAPs are a large improvement for particles < 100 um.

Page 9, Line 5-7: “…. four different combinations of greysclae thresholds:...” are looked at in the paper. On Page 27, Line 11, in conclusions it states that these four combination are used. I would suggest that the paper, either state a preference/recommendation for one of these greyscale threshold, or state that there is little difference.

Specific Comments:
Page 22, Line 11-16: The CDP spectrum seems really noisy, with large changes from one channel to the next. For example, around 30 um. Can this be commented on in the text discussion?

Page 25, Line 2-6: Caption should indicate that the vertical lines on the data points represent Poisson counting uncertainty. It is a little hard to see the uncertainty lines, could all the uncertainty be put in black?

Page 26, Line 15: (Check other places in the paper), be more direct and don’t start sentences with “This” but state what this refers to. For example, “… spherical particles. The K07 algorithm is ...”

Page 27, Line 5-6: Be more direct and combine sentences, for example: “… derived particle size distributions, which is particularly a ...”

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AR by Sebastian O'Shea on behalf of the Authors (03 May 2019) Manuscript

ED: Publish as is (08 May 2019) by Andrew Sayer

AR by Sebastian O'Shea on behalf of the Authors (09 May 2019) Manuscript

Short summary

Optical array probe measurements of clouds are widely used to inform and validate numerical weather and climate models. In this paper, we discuss artefacts which may bias data from these instruments. Using laboratory and synthetic datasets, we demonstrate how greyscale analysis can be used to filter data, constraining the sample volume and improving data quality particularly at small sizes where their measurements are considered unreliable.