European Geosciences Union c © 2005 Author(s). This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License. Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics Discussions Interactive comment on “Supersaturation, dehydration, and denitrification in Arctic cirrus”

• Main Author: B. Kärcher
• Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Published: 2005
• Subjects: 1. Measurement constraints; Arctic; Kiruna
• Online Access: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.563.7133; http://www.cosis.net/copernicus/EGU/acpd/5/S601/acpd-5-S601_p.pdf?PHPSESSID=dace6ddc73fdb06eba86b0b36195604e

I agree that the discussion paper provides not enough information on which observa-tions the model case study is based and how the model has been initialized. I will expand Section 3.1 in this regard. As mentioned in Section 3.1, I am referring to the measurements taken with the GKSS Raman lidar near Kiruna, Sweden, published by Reichhardt et al. (2002), in particular their Figure 1b. As the observation is described there, and no further in situ information (e.g., from aircraft measurements) is available, I find it not necessary to repeat the lidar S601 image in the discussion paper, but will describe the image in more detail in the revised manuscript. The observations suggest an almost continuously acting uplift, little wind shear, and little change of horizontal wind direction during cloud development. Multiple fall streaks were present, and cloud cells at the top boundary near the tropopause, probably caused by mesoscale dynamical variability. The initial vertical profiles of Θ, T, and Si have been taken from the model study of Lin et al. (2005), who independently study formation pathways (homogeneous versus