Comments on 'A comparison of optical measurements of liquid water content and drop size distribution in adiabatic regions of Florida cumuli'

A recent paper by Lawson and Blyth (1998) [Lawson, R.P., Blyth, A.M., 1998. A comparison of optical measurements of liquid water content and drop size distribution in adiabatic regions of Florida cumuli. Atmos. Res. 47-48, 671-690.] is critiqued for its conclusions dealing with the measurement with several different aircraft microphysics probes of liquid water content (LWC) in 'adiabatic cores' of isolated and relatively small cumulus clouds found during the 1995 Small Cumulus Microphysics Study (SCMS) experiment in Florida. The criteria used in that paper to identify the cores were found to be unreliable, leading to identifications of adiabatic cloud cores that contained sub-adiabatic LWC. The analysis in the present paper of 1000-Hz particulate volume monitor (PVM) LWC data for SCMS Cu leads to the following conclusions: (1) A new probe, the cloud droplet spectrometer (CDS), located on the same aircraft and operated at 1 Hz, overestimates maximum LWC in the Cu, and the claim of Lawson and Blyth (1998) that the I-Hz CDS data show often precisely LWC equivalent to the predicted adiabatic LWC in those Cu is not supportable. (2) The high-frequency PVM data show adiabatic LWC in aircraft passes close to cloud base, and maximum LWC that is slightly sub-adiabatic in small cloud parcels in passes through the active updraft regions of taller Cu. (3) The taller Cu show internally sharp LWC gradients that are interpreted as nonuniform local mixtures of LWC and interfaces resulting from the entrainment process. (4) The understanding of the observed high-resolution LWC structure requires a better understanding of Cu dynamics associated with cloud growth, and entrainment, and mixing processes. (C) 1999 Published by Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.