Source apportionment of PM<sub>2.5</sub> at a regional background site in North
China using PMF linked with radiocarbon analysis: insight into the
contribution of biomass burning

Zong, Zheng; Wang, Xiaoping; Tian, Chongguo; Chen, Yingjun; Qu, Lin; Ji, Ling; Zhi, Guorui; Li, Jun; Zhang, Gan

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-16-11249-2016

Articles | Volume 16, issue 17

https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-16-11249-2016

© Author(s) 2016. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.

Special issue:

East Asia emissions assessment (EA2)

https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-16-11249-2016

© Author(s) 2016. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.

Articles | Volume 16, issue 17

Research article

|

12 Sep 2016

Research article |

| 12 Sep 2016

Source apportionment of PM_2.5 at a regional background site in North China using PMF linked with radiocarbon analysis: insight into the contribution of biomass burning

Zheng Zong, Xiaoping Wang, Chongguo Tian, Yingjun Chen, Lin Qu, Ling Ji, Guorui Zhi, Jun Li, and Gan Zhang

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Final revised paper (published on 12 Sep 2016)
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Preprint (discussion started on 16 Feb 2016)

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Status: closed

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

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RC1: 'Referee comment', Anonymous Referee #1, 01 Apr 2016
SC1: 'comment', Olga Popovicheva, 01 Apr 2016
- AC1: '"Reply to O. Popovicheva"', Zheng Zong, 25 Apr 2016
- RC2: 'Review', Olga Popovicheva, 28 Apr 2016

Peer-review completion

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

AR by Zheng Zong on behalf of the Authors (26 May 2016) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Referee Nomination & Report Request started (07 Jun 2016) by Gregory Frost

RR by Anonymous Referee #2 (14 Jun 2016)

RR by Anonymous Referee #1 (28 Jun 2016)

Suggestions for revision or reasons for rejection

The manuscript has undergone significant improvement in terms of written language and clarity. The manuscript does have a potential to be a very good paper as the authors have collected a large amount of data and provided extensive analysis of sources of PM2.5 using both measurements and modeling. However, there are still major problems left in the manuscript to be addressed. In their response to the comments from the first round of review, often times they have not provided any new information that was not already in the manuscript to really address the referee’s comments. There are still typos throughout the manuscript and some major references missing.

In my opinion, the main problem with the paper is the accuracy and interpretation of the radiocarbon measurements. The authors make conclusions about the sources of carbonaceous aerosols from large regions of China based on only two samples from different air masses. I don’t think that one sample per cluster is representative of what the sources are in a particular region. Further the authors do not report uncertainty in their source apportionment estimates, which makes it very hard to interpret the accuracy of these measurements. The title of the manuscript suggests that radiocarbon was a major part of the source apportionment study, and I don’t think that is fair to say that based on what they report in the manuscript. I cannot comment on the PMF interpretation of the 14C and PMF results in general, however the 14C alone is not enough to interpret the sources.

Further the manuscript lacks a comprehensive discussion of the results. Maybe some part of the results can be moved into the discussion, but even so a more comprehensive interpretation of the results is necessary. The conclusions only provide a summary of the results, but not actual conclusions.

Referee Report: PDF

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ED: Reconsider after major revisions (29 Jun 2016) by Gregory Frost

AR by Zheng Zong on behalf of the Authors (22 Jul 2016) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Referee Nomination & Report Request started (04 Aug 2016) by Gregory Frost

RR by Anonymous Referee #1 (09 Aug 2016)

ED: Reconsider after minor revisions (Editor review) (23 Aug 2016) by Gregory Frost

AR by Zheng Zong on behalf of the Authors (25 Aug 2016) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Publish as is (27 Aug 2016) by Gregory Frost

AR by Zheng Zong on behalf of the Authors (29 Aug 2016) Author's response Manuscript

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Short summary

We explore the source apportionment of PM_2.5 in North China in winter using an original combination method, and coal combustion, biomass burning and vehicle emissions are identified as the largest contributors of PM_2.5, accounting for 29.6, 19.3 and 15.8 %, respectively. Biomass burning emission was highlighted in the present study because of its dominant contribution to the PM_2.5 burden in the Shandong Peninsula and because it is neglected in the air pollution control program.

Source apportionment of PM2.5 at a regional background site in North China using PMF linked with radiocarbon analysis: insight into the contribution of biomass burning

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Interactive discussion

Peer-review completion

Source apportionment of PM_2.5 at a regional background site in North China using PMF linked with radiocarbon analysis: insight into the contribution of biomass burning