Comment on “Do aerosols impact ground observation of total cloud cover over the North China Plain?”

We further test the hypothesis suggested by Sun et al. (Sun et al., 2014). Recognizing the problems caused by the area-averaging calculation method, we focus on the analysis of individual observations over the North China Plain (NCP) and a larger area where aerosol loading acts as the main contributor to the difference between satellite and ground observations of total cloud cover (ΔTCC). We show that as aerosol loading increases, the occurrence frequencies of ΔTCC > 12.5 % increase at first and then decrease at heavy aerosol loading conditions. There is a significant linear relationship between the cumulative frequency of ΔTCC > 12.5 % and aerosol loading for both the increasing and decreasing trends. Therefore, a two-phase relationship between ΔTCCs and aerosol loading is confirmed.