Influence of the aerosol solar extinction on photochemistry during the 2010 Russian wildfires episode

Péré, J. C.; Bessagnet, B.; Pont, V.; Mallet, M.; Minvielle, F.

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-15-10983-2015

Volume 15, issue 19

Atmos. Chem. Phys., 15, 10983–10998, 2015
https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-15-10983-2015
© Author(s) 2015. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.

Volume 15, issue 19

Research article 02 Oct 2015

Research article | 02 Oct 2015

Influence of the aerosol solar extinction on photochemistry during the 2010 Russian wildfires episode

J. C. Péré et al.

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Final revised paper (published on 02 Oct 2015)
Preprint (discussion started on 10 Mar 2015)

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Status: closed

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

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RC C2434: 'The major issue I mentioned in the first version is still here.', Anonymous Referee #2, 11 May 2015
- AC C5176: 'responses_to_reviewer2', Jean-Christophe Pere, 24 Jul 2015
RC C2646: 'Anonymous Review 1', Anonymous Referee #1, 15 May 2015
- AC C5177: 'responses_to_reviewer1', Jean-Christophe Pere, 24 Jul 2015

Peer review completion

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

AR by Anna Wenzel on behalf of the Authors (27 Jul 2015) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Referee Nomination & Report Request started (31 Jul 2015) by Jason West

RR by Anonymous Referee #2 (04 Aug 2015)

Suggestions for revision or reasons for rejection

The third revision of this manuscript changed slightly from the previous version mainly by adding three comparison tables over a surface station (its exact location is still not clear). These comparison tables show big model biases, especially for sulfate and NO2, with biases up to 500%. The base model’s performance is too poor to be used in this study. Also, adding aerosol radiative influences made the sulfate and nitrate correlation coefficients even worse (table 3). There is also a controversial discussion about wildfire emission increasing SSA (page 8, line 15) instead of not decreasing it as the fire emission usually contains abundant black carbon. The author should expand this discussion to convince that increased SSA is caused by wildfire, not by other issues. Throughout this manuscript, there was still very limited model-observation comparison, especially without any time-series comparison, though it did discuss the plume evaluation.
This manuscript also has some contradictory discussions. For instance, in page 2, line 11, “The ozone reduction is shown to occur over the entire boundary layer, where aerosols are located”. However, figure 8 shows higher ozone with aerosol influence. Please clarify.
Page 2, line 13, “Also, the total aerosol mass concentration (PM10) is shown to be decreased by 1–2 %”. You need to limit this conclusion to be anthropogenic SOA only. Otherwise, how can the biomass burning emitted many aerosol while reducing PM10?
Figures 1-3. They evaluation of the plumes should be compared to time-series observation, which you did not show any of them.
Figure 7, a single comparison with CALIPSO is insufficient. To support your discussion, you need show the comparison during the wildfire events and no-fire events.

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RR by Anonymous Referee #1 (13 Aug 2015)

ED: Reconsider after major revisions (17 Aug 2015) by Jason West

AR by Jean-Christophe Pere on behalf of the Authors (03 Sep 2015) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Reconsider after minor revisions (Editor review) (11 Sep 2015) by Jason West

Your revisions improved the paper, especially including some model evaluation in the 3 tables. However, I expect that Reviewer #2 would not be satisfied with your recent changes, and I do not want to ask Reviewer #2 to review the paper a third time. Reviewer #2's opinion also differs strongly from Reviewer #1. Because of that, I decided to review the paper myself.

I see that the model performance in Tables 1-3 and Figure 8 is not as good as one would hope to see. But although that poor performance weakens the paper, it does not necessarily invalidate your main conclusions which are found by comparing versions of the model with and without aerosol effects on photochemistry. The changes due to your model improvement by adding photochemistry are pretty small compared to the large model errors.

** I think that it would be worthwhile for you to discuss this poor model performance in the paper and comment on the extent to which that poor performance may or may not affect your main conclusions in the paper.

** Regarding Figure 7, you should report the units that are used to calculate the VOC/NOx ratio. That ratio would differ if you used different units.

** For the text referring to Figure 7, you say that this shows ozone is in a NOx-saturated regime. How is that conclusion reached? What ratio is meant to designate Nox-saturated and based on what studies?

** Although Figure 8 is a nice addition to the paper, I find it really hard to read. The large dotted area corresponding with uncertainty (I presume) makes it hard to see other lines on the graph, and the two noFire cases lines are hard to discern. Please consider remaking this figure so that it is more clear.

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AR by Jean-Christophe Pere on behalf of the Authors (18 Sep 2015) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Publish as is (22 Sep 2015) by Jason West

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Influence of the aerosol solar extinction on photochemistry during the 2010 Russian wildfires episode

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