Although previous studies addressed this original way of how deducing past climate conditions from color paintings, such as aerosol optical depth (AOD) the new results are critically reviewing these former publications and yield new critical elements in this original research. While concluding that reconstructions of AOD may be possible in some specific cases, the authors do warn about the strong uncertainties related to parameters not carefully considered, which restrains the field of possibilities. To assess the scientific soundness of the results, three reviewers from complementary fields of atmospheric sciences positively reviewed the original manuscript. They have contributed to improve the quality of this paper and all agreed upon the conclusions research, which is a fair guarantee that these results should broadly interest the geoscience community.
Although previous studies addressed this original way of how deducing past climate conditions...
This study investigates the possibility of inferring information on aerosol optical depth from photographs of historic paintings. The idea – which has been applied in previous studies – is very interesting because it would provide an archive of the atmospheric aerosol loading covering many centuries. We show that twilight colours depend not only on the aerosol optical thickness, but also on several other parameters, making a quantitative estimate of aerosol optical depth very difficult.
This study investigates the possibility of inferring information on aerosol optical depth from...