The authors made a significant effort in characterizing
measurements' quality and on investigating limitations involved in the analysis of a very
long term time series.
The paper now includes information which was missing in the previous version, and
is essential for the reader to assess the data series reliability.
Within the stated limitations, the analysis provides a useful analysis of a long-term
dataset in the Southern Mediterranean, where few high quality data are present.
The paper may be accepted with minor revisions, outlined
below.
Various typoes are present throughout the text (see, e.g., reference citations); some
are reported below.
Page 2, lines 11-12: "Comparing the 30-year periods (1954-1983 and 1983-2012) we have found a difference of 4.5%." The sentence is not clear.
p. 3, l. 25: parenthesis
p. 4, l. 9: parentheses
p. 5, l. 34: parentheses
p. 8, l. 28: The method used to subtract the thermal offset was present in the
previous version and has been removed. I would prefer it to be included,
to allow the reader to understand how corrections are made.
p. 13, l. 31: difference
p. 14, figure 3: I would replace the "simulated" label in the upper figure with "estimated"
p. 17, l. 23: years
p. 18 l. 6 - p. 19, l. 4: figure 6 and the associated discussion
do not add information to the paper and might be removed
p. 20 l. 16: reconstruction
p. 20 l. 23-24: I would suggest modufying the sentence as follows: "Moreover, SSR is much more sensitive than SD to aerosol optical depth change ..."
p. 23, l. 9-10: The sentence "Individual seasonal calculated SSRs do not exceed by more than ±5%, the SSR variability of all sky data, with the exception of the winter season" is not clear.
p. 23 l. 14: may the decrease in mid 1960's be related with the Agung eruption (1963-64)?
p. 24 l. 4-7: is the Charmex startospheric AOD used in the analysis? Apparently, it is not included in figure 10. This should be clarified in the discussion.
p. 35, l. 30: Vignola et al., 2016 instead of 2012. |