Comment on comment by Markus Rapp and Franz-Josef Lübken on “Ice iron/sodium film as cause for high noctilucent cloud radar reflectivity”

摘要

Rapp and Lübken (RL09) state that there is excellent, precise agreement betweenudobservations and polar mesosphere summer echo (PMSE) models based on radar reflectionudby gas‐phase electrons and conclude that because of this excellent, precise agreement otherudmodels should not be considered. In particular, they provide figures demonstratingudquantitative agreement between observations and a heating/overshoot model. Carefuludconsideration of the models presented by RL09 shows that there are inconsistencies in theudassumptions regarding Lambda (i.e., the ratio of the number density of electrons attachedudto aerosol particles to the number density of free electrons) and there are quantitative errorsudin the calculation of the radar reflection. In addition, RL09’s claim that the correlationudbetween PMSE maximum and bite‐outs is either spurious or misrepresentative is refutedudusing radar measurements. Finally, it is shown that there is a shortcoming (not discussedudby RL09) in the Bellan 2008 model, and a modification addressing this shortcoming isudbriefly described.