Constraints on Asian ozone using Aura TES, OMI and Terra MOPITT

Jiang, Z.; Worden, J. R.; Jones, D. B. A.; Lin, J.-T.; Verstraeten, W. W.; Henze, D. K.

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-15-99-2015

Articles | Volume 15, issue 1

https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-15-99-2015

© Author(s) 2015. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-15-99-2015

© Author(s) 2015. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.

Articles | Volume 15, issue 1

Research article

|

08 Jan 2015

Research article |

| 08 Jan 2015

Constraints on Asian ozone using Aura TES, OMI and Terra MOPITT

Z. Jiang, J. R. Worden, D. B. A. Jones, J.-T. Lin, W. W. Verstraeten, and D. K. Henze

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Final revised paper (published on 08 Jan 2015)
Supplement to the final revised paper
Preprint (discussion started on 29 Jul 2014)

Interactive discussion

Status: closed

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

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- Supplement

RC C6664: 'Review of manuscript by Jiang et al. (acp-2014-510)', Anonymous Referee #1, 08 Sep 2014
- AC C8079: 'Response to Reviewer 1', Zhe Jiang, 16 Oct 2014
RC C7564: 'Reviewer comments', Anonymous Referee #2, 30 Sep 2014
- AC C8085: 'Response to Reviewer 2', Zhe Jiang, 16 Oct 2014

Peer-review completion

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

AR by Zhe Jiang on behalf of the Authors (16 Oct 2014) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Referee Nomination & Report Request started (18 Oct 2014) by Robert Harley

RR by Anonymous Referee #2 (04 Nov 2014)

Suggestions for revision or reasons for rejection

I don’t see that the paper has been sufficiently re-written in terms of clearly framing the questions being addressed and articulating the new contributions. I still have some concerns regarding the communication and interpretation of the analysis, including regarding queries in my previous review, detailed below, along with a few other points in the text that would benefit from some clarification.

L37-40 implies that the updates to the emissions are needed to capture the ozone distribution observed by TES, but it seems from the new Figure 4 that the free tropospheric ozone is not very sensitive to the emission changes. This needs to be clarified in the abstract and also in the conclusions (L460-464 seem a bit contradictory; first it’s stated that ozone doesn’t change much following the updated emissions, but then it’s asserted that the good agreement reflects reliability of… updated inventories (I think the latter is meant for CO, but it’s not clear as written)).

L43 It seems misleading to report influence from anthropogenic VOC in the abstract when that has not been explicitly examined in the same way as the biogenic VOCs.

L45-47. Is this export to a particular region?

L59-60. The time period over which these numbers apply should be stated.

L114 It would be best to quantify what is meant by “good agreement”.

L127. What is the resolution of the a priori from MOZART-4?

L252-253. Is it solely due to emissions or is it also that the meteorology is well represented?

L276. Isn’t some of the correlation driven by transport (as opposed to chemistry)?

I don’t feel the authors adequately addressed my previous query (General comments #2) regarding the number of data points going into each correlation in Table 1. Their response suggests they are calculating monthly averages over the region, but I’m obviously misunderstanding since there would then be only 1 point for each table entry. Is it the correlation of the monthly average at each sampling location (and if so, does this mean that many points only include two values for a monthly mean?) Please add the number of data points for each entry in the table and provide a detailed explanation of the approach. This is crucial for understanding how good the constraints actually are on the O3/CO relationship in the model and thus the strength of the evaluation being done.

In response to previous General Comment #4, why is the ozone chemical regime being discussed at all if it’s beyond scope of the paper?

Response to Specific Comment #7, why assume a proportional relationship if it’s already been established that the instrument is more sensitive to lightning NO2 (vs. surface anthropogenic)?

Response to Specific Comment #11: please include in the text what was found by the Jiang et al. 2014 evaluation of the OH bias on the CO estimates.

Response to Specific Comment #14. Here, I had hoped that the authors would present their findings in the context of the current understanding (OH recycling from isoprene oxidation in low-NOx conditions) and specifically whether the sign of the response they find in the model is consistent with this latest understanding.

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ED: Reconsider after minor revisions (Editor review) (08 Nov 2014) by Robert Harley

AR by Zhe Jiang on behalf of the Authors (13 Nov 2014) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Publish as is (24 Nov 2014) by Robert Harley

AR by Zhe Jiang on behalf of the Authors (24 Nov 2014)

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Short summary

We use satellite measurements of O3, CO and NO2 from TES, MOPITT and OMI to quantify O3 precursor emissions for 2006 and their impact on free tropospheric O3 over northeastern Asia. Using the adjoint of GEOS-Chem, we found that Chinese emissions have the largest influence on the free tropospheric O3. The contributions from lightning NOx in summer and India and southeastern Asia emissions in winter are sizable, comparable with Chinese emissions.