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: Arctic; Ström
• Online Access: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.563.7619; http://www.cosis.net/copernicus/EGU/acpd/5/S545/acpd-5-S545_p.pdf?PHPSESSID=dace6ddc73fdb06eba86b0b36195604e

I agree with Dr. Pfister that idealized simulations are valuable, because of their potential to study the interplay between and the relative importance of many physical cloud processes. Here follows a point-by-point reply to his constructive suggestions. 1. Describing the cloud observations I agree that this paper should stand on its own. I will therefore provide a brief overview of the meteorological situation and the initialization of ambient profiles in Section 3.1. 2. Comparing simulation results with the lidar observations Lin et al. (2005) provide a model-based analysis of the lidar observations detailed in Reichart et al. (2002). As I have stated on p.1841, lines 7+8, the foci of the Lin et S545 al. study and the present work are substantially different from each other. I pointed out the good general agreement between the cloud properties presented in the dis-cussion paper and in the Lin et al. study to avoid duplicating large parts of the latter. Rather, the discussion paper should focus on other aspects such as maintenance of supersaturation and HNO3-ice interactions. I admit that the present Section 3.2 provides too little detail about the agreement be-tween the two model studies. I will expand this part in the revision. 3. Robustness of conclusions I believe the conclusion of substantial supersaturation is robust. The study of Kärcher and Ström (2003) first pointed out that small-scale variability in vertical winds (hence temperature fluctuations) likely control the magnitude and variability in observed total ice crystal number concentrations in cirrus clouds. This point has been further exam-ined by Hoyle et al. (2005) with similar and better quantified conclusions. The model