Evaluation of CanESM Cloudiness, Cloud Type and Cloud Radiative Forcing Climatologies Using the CALIPSO-GOCCP and CERES Datasets

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

This manuscript reports improvements of cloud parameters simulation by CanESM and its validation with CALIOP satellite measurements. The paper is well organized with detailed discussions on the results. I think it can be further published after addressing some minor issues:

1) section 2: it would be more persuasive that the satellite validation in the results section can also include cloud simulations from other ESMs. If not available, the performance of CanESM cloud simulation should be discussed. 

2) Fig.8-9 and 12 are too blur.

Author Response

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Reviewer 2 Report

Review of “Evaluation of CanESM Cloudiness, Cloud Type and Cloud Radiative Forcing Climatologies Using the CALIPSO-GOCCP and CERES datasets” by Faisal S. Boudala et al.

In this paper, the authors have tried to evaluate the cloudiness, cloud type, and cloud radiative forcing climatologies simulated by the Canadian Environmental System Models (CanESMs) version 5 (CanESM5) and version 2 (CanESM2) by using CALIPSO-GOCCP and CERES datasets. Though the aim of the study is scientifically sound and worth to be published. The analysis is good and the obtained results are presented well with sufficient figures. However, the manuscript needs minor corrections before acceptance for publication.

Comments

There are a few unexplained words in the abstract which need to be explained. For example, GOCCP, AMIP, CALIPSO-COSP, and CERES. Authors may know about all these words but for common readers, it is very difficult to follow what it is.

Lines 15-16: ‘validated against the GOCCP based CF.’  The authors mentioned ‘CALIPSO-GOCCP’ in the paper title but immediate in the abstract they only mentioned GOCCP.

Figure 1 caption: Please provide the full form of GOCCP and TCF.

Figure 5 caption: Please provide the full form of CF, LLC, MLC, and HLC.

All the figure captions need to be modified with better clarity. I strongly suggest to the authors please check all the figure captions again and define all the explained words in the revised version.

Author Response

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Reviewer 3 Report

In this study , the authors use up-to-date versions of the satellite datasets to evaluate the new CanESM5 model’s ability to simulate clouds and radiation. This is an important research topic. At the same time, the content of the article is clearly described and the conclusion is reasonable.  But there are some minor issues to be aware of： 1， as to figure 1, the models have discrepancy at the observed TCF values, where Is it because the observation product or the model needs to be improved. 2， as to figures 9, 10, there are also significant inconsistencies between model and observations that require further study. Further, inconsistencies in the calculation of radiation will also appear such as figure 15. 3，Figures and tables need to be optimized for better publishing effectiveness and attractiveness.

 

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.docx