Submicron aerosol source apportionment of wintertime pollution in Paris, France by double positive matrix factorization (PMF<sup>2</sup>) using an aerosol chemical speciation monitor (ACSM) and a multi-wavelength Aethalometer

Petit, J.-E.; Favez, O.; Sciare, J.; Canonaco, F.; Croteau, P.; Močnik, G.; Jayne, J.; Worsnop, D.; Leoz-Garziandia, E.

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-14-13773-2014

Articles | Volume 14, issue 24

https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-14-13773-2014

© Author(s) 2014. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-14-13773-2014

© Author(s) 2014. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.

Articles | Volume 14, issue 24

Research article

|

22 Dec 2014

Research article |

| 22 Dec 2014

Submicron aerosol source apportionment of wintertime pollution in Paris, France by double positive matrix factorization (PMF²) using an aerosol chemical speciation monitor (ACSM) and a multi-wavelength Aethalometer

J.-E. Petit, O. Favez, J. Sciare, F. Canonaco, P. Croteau, G. Močnik, J. Jayne, D. Worsnop, and E. Leoz-Garziandia

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Final revised paper (published on 22 Dec 2014)
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Preprint (discussion started on 02 Jun 2014)
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Interactive discussion

Status: closed

AC: Author comment | RC: Referee comment | SC: Short comment | EC: Editor comment

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RC C4109: 'Review comments for acp-2014-279 by Petit et al.', Anonymous Referee #2, 25 Jun 2014
- AC C5227: 'Response to Referee#2 review', JEAN-EUDES PETIT, 24 Jul 2014
RC C5763: 'Referee Comment', Anonymous Referee #1, 11 Aug 2014
- AC C5935: 'Response to Referee#1 review comments', JEAN-EUDES PETIT, 15 Aug 2014

Peer-review completion

AR: Author's response | RR: Referee report | ED: Editor decision

AR by Jean-Eudes Petit on behalf of the Authors (23 Aug 2014) Author's response

ED: Referee Nomination & Report Request started (25 Aug 2014) by Nikolaos Mihalopoulos

RR by Anonymous Referee #2 (10 Sep 2014)

Suggestions for revision or reasons for rejection

The revised manuscript is well written and the reviewer appreciates the authors’ effort on performing and documenting the extensive sensitivity tests, which is rarely seen in receptor model papers. However, the reviewer still has reservations on the “sequential” PMF analysis and does not believe it will ultimately perform better than conventional approaches with respect to PM source apportionment at this site. As pointed out by the other reviewer and also the authors, every step of PMF analysis, e.g., estimating weights, implementing constraints, as well as deciding number of factors and other parameters, require guess-work/assumptions. The two-step PMF analysis will likely make the solutions more subjective and dubious. More works need to be done to understand how uncertainties multiply in the PMF×PMF process and provide convincing evidences that the “overall” uncertainty and/or bias are manageable. This may be achieved using synthetic data similar to what have been done for one-step PMF analysis (see the U.S.EPA PMF 5.0 manual for references). Whether or how the bootstrapping method (working on the original input data) can be applied to the two-step PMF is also worth examination.

PMF analysis including only total OA followed by multi-linear regression analyses, as suggested by this reviewer, will also "bridge OA fractions obtained using traditional AMS-PMF methodology". It can apportion HOA, p-BBOA, and OOA into sources likely as well as, if not better than, the PMF×PMF approach and mitigate the empiricism of HOA, p-BBOA, and OOA quantification in the PMF analysis. Inter-comparison of various PMF results is indeed critical to this study if the goal of this paper is to demonstrate a “novel” method that can work better than existing methods and advance our understanding of source contributions. The reviewer does agree that this method will be a valuable addition to the current sets of methods providing weight-of-evidence for source apportionment at this and other monitoring sites.

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ED: Reconsider after minor revisions (Editor review) (16 Sep 2014) by Nikolaos Mihalopoulos

AR by Jean-Eudes Petit on behalf of the Authors (03 Oct 2014) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Publish as is (08 Oct 2014) by Nikolaos Mihalopoulos

AR by Jean-Eudes Petit on behalf of the Authors (08 Oct 2014)

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Submicron aerosol source apportionment of wintertime pollution in Paris, France by double positive matrix factorization (PMF2) using an aerosol chemical speciation monitor (ACSM) and a multi-wavelength Aethalometer

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Interactive discussion

Peer-review completion

Submicron aerosol source apportionment of wintertime pollution in Paris, France by double positive matrix factorization (PMF²) using an aerosol chemical speciation monitor (ACSM) and a multi-wavelength Aethalometer