The Recovery and Re-Calibration of a 13-Month Aerosol Extinction Profiles Dataset from Searchlight Observations from New Mexico, after the 1963 Agung Eruption
, Graham W. Mann 3,4, John Barnes 5, Abel Calle 2, Sandip S. Dhomse 3,6, Victoria E. Cachorro 2, Terry Deshler 7, Zhengyao Li 8, Nimmi Sharma 9 and Louis Elterman 10,†
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsAtmospheric aerosols, including volcanic origin, play an important role in the redistribution of fluxes of both short- and long-wave radiation in the atmosphere, which depends on their optical properties, including the extinction coefficient. The radiation effects of aerosols are largely determined by their absorption and scattering properties, along with its mass. Although the optical properties of atmospheric aerosols have been studied quite well, nevertheless, the parameters of a volcanic aerosols are characterized by a certain degree of uncertainty. From this point of view, the article under review is of significant interest to specialists in the field of numerical modeling of weather and climate, as well as specialists in the field of atmospheric optics.
The article makes a very positive impression both in form and content. The results obtained are of great interest to a wide audience, have scientific novelty and are of great practical importance. The methods and approaches used by the authors for processing information and obtaining quantitative estimates are correct and do not raise objections.
As a minor comment, I recommend the authors slightly reduce the abstract.
Author Response
The Answer is in the attached file.
Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsThe reviewed manuscript presents a detailed report on research aimed at the recovery and re-calibration of vertical profile observations of stratospheric aerosol layer from the 13-month period recorded at two stations in New Mexico (US) after the 1963 Agung Eruption. The data recovery process used re-digitizing the 105 profiles of 550 nm aerosol extinction from US Air Force Cambridge Research Laboratories report, followed by the re-calibration, including by, among others, Rayleigh and aerosol slant transmission corrections via the MODTRAN code in transmission mode. The work also presents a brief historical context for the searchlight atmospheric profiling technique and a short reference to previous research work in this field.
Appreciating the contribution of the authors' team to the creation of such an extensive and original work, as well as its significant cognitive value, I highly value this work and propose only certain editorial corrections, listed below.
Major comments:
It is recommended to write the Abstract in a slightly shorter (less detailed) form and remove literature references from it. The last sentence in the Abstract section ("Data described in this work are available at https://doi.org/10.1594/PAN-51 GAEA.949377 (Antuña-Marrero et al., 2022)" does not match the content of the abstract and seems to be redundant. Reference to this resource is provided at the end of the manuscript in the "Data Availability Statement" section.
The main structure of the manuscript is quite extensive and resembles a large chapter in a monograph rather than a scientific article. It does not seem necessary to divide Section 1 (Introduction) into subsections.
If possible, descriptions of the measuring instrument, dataset and the recovery and re-calibration methodology used could be combined into one section (with second- and third-level subsections, if necessary), although due to the considerable detail of the characteristics of the research methodology, this is not strictly necessary. However, it is recommended to use numbered subsections everywhere, so the section "Searchlight Observations and Their Original Processing" (line 229) should also have a number.
Section 9 (Summary) could be titled "Conclusions".
Minor comments:
In the authors' affiliation references, number 8 was omitted (number 6 was mentioned a second time).
The manuscript should be supplemented with missing keywords.
You should add the missing spaces before the unit nm (lines: 23, 98, 135, 137-138, 271, 579, 636-637, 995) as well.
The way in which references are cited is inconsistent with the style recommended in the guidelines for authors and inappropriate for the format of the bibliometric data contained in the References section. Works should be cited in the order of references in the text with ordinal numbering and listed in that order in the References Section.
Author Response
The Answers are in the attached file
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 3 Report
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsOverall evaluation:
1. Main contribution
This study aims to rescue and re-calibrate the stratospheric aerosols from the Mt. Agung 1963 eruption. The aerosols in the troposphere are also of interest because of their impact on the tropospheric component of the total aerosol slant transmission, a very important parameter in the re-calibration process. The dataset, which forms the backbone of your research, is of significant importance.
2. Defects of the paper:
(a) The abstract is too extended. Some abbreviations and small coefficients are used.
(b) The historical context should be resumed and included in the Introduction.
3. Minor mistakes:
(a) The image from Figure 1 does not look like the original and is a bit oblique.
(b) "We" should be avoided.
(c) the link is used in the abstract when it should be in the references.
(d) the introduction does not provide sufficient background.
(e) the aim of this paper is unclear from the beginning.
(f) some references are very old.
Author Response
The Answers are in the attached file
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Round 2
Reviewer 3 Report
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsThe link http://www.sparc-ssirc.org/data/datarescueactivity.html is still in the text, not in the references. Is it corrected or not?
I understand that you used an image from the mentioned report. Do you have permission to use that image from Figure 1?
Please correct the position of the eq. (1).
Author Response
Reviewer 3 (2nd Review)_
Comments and Suggestions for Authors
The link http://www.sparc-ssirc.org/data/datarescueactivity.html is still in the text, not in the references. Is it corrected or not?
Answer: I think it is correct because it is a link to the website of an International Scientific Panel, not a published article or report.
I understand that you used an image from the mentioned report. Do you have permission to use that image from Figure 1?
Answer: Figure 1 is from a scientific report downloaded from the Defense Technical Information Center (DTIC) The DTIC copyright guidance says (https://discover.dtic.mil/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/copyright_guidance.pdf ):
“U.S. Government works prepared by officers and employees of the U.S. Government as part of their official duties are not protected by copyright in the U.S. These works may be copied and distributed in their entirety without permission. Users should note and attribute the U.S. Government agency and private author when incorporating works of the U.S. Government in a copyrighted publication.”
Please correct the position of the eq. (1).
Answer: Corrected.
