Dry season aerosol iron solubility in tropical northern Australia

Winton, V. Holly L.; Edwards, Ross; Bowie, Andrew R.; Keywood, Melita; Williams, Alistair G.; Chambers, Scott D.; Selleck, Paul W.; Desservettaz, Maximilien; Mallet, Marc D.; Paton-Walsh, Clare

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-16-12829-2016

Articles | Volume 16, issue 19

https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-16-12829-2016

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

https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-16-12829-2016

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

Articles | Volume 16, issue 19

Research article

|

14 Oct 2016

Research article |

| 14 Oct 2016

Dry season aerosol iron solubility in tropical northern Australia

V. Holly L. Winton, Ross Edwards, Andrew R. Bowie, Melita Keywood, Alistair G. Williams, Scott D. Chambers, Paul W. Selleck, Maximilien Desservettaz, Marc D. Mallet, and Clare Paton-Walsh

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Final revised paper (published on 14 Oct 2016)
Supplement to the final revised paper
Preprint (discussion started on 17 Jun 2016)
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Interactive discussion

Status: closed

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

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RC1: 'reconsider after major revisions', Anonymous Referee #1, 02 Jul 2016
- AC1: 'Author response to referee #1', Holly Winton, 24 Aug 2016
RC2: 'Review of Winton et al., Dry season aerosol iron solubility…', Anonymous Referee #2, 14 Jul 2016
- AC2: 'Author response to referee #2', Holly Winton, 24 Aug 2016
RC3: 'Referee Comment (acp-2016-419)', Anonymous Referee #3, 19 Jul 2016
- AC3: 'Author response to referee #3', Holly Winton, 24 Aug 2016

Peer-review completion

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

AR by Holly Winton on behalf of the Authors (24 Aug 2016) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Referee Nomination & Report Request started (27 Aug 2016) by Sergey A. Nizkorodov

RR by Anonymous Referee #2 (09 Sep 2016)

Suggestions for revision or reasons for rejection

I thank the authors for their efforts to address my comments on the previous version of this manuscript. Although there are still many errors and inaccuracies in the manuscript, these are relatively minor and it will be suitable for publication once they are addressed.

P 3, l 24 and P 10, l 8: Australia, not Australian.
P 4, l 2: delete “associated”.
P 7, l 10: define MDL on first use. Add units to value.
P 8, l 25-16: Please explain the statement made in this sentence better. As far as I can see, the observed ratios of nss-K/Fe give firm evidence that biomass burning is a much stronger emitter of K, than of Fe, but not much else.
P 9, l 6-8: This sentence is repeated almost word-for-word on page 14 (lines 8-10). I don’t think that both are necessary.
P 9, l 18: The figures referred to here should be 3 and 5, not 4 and 6. Delete “like” or use a hyphen “crustal-like”.
P 9, l 20-21: This sentence is not an effective or accurate description of the data presented in Figure 4. Perhaps it would be simplest to delete it.
P 10, l 3-25: Please decide whether to use nano- or micro- units in these paragraphs.
P 10, l 5: units are incorrect.
P 11, l 13: I think the dates given here are wrong. They suggest that there were only 3 samples in Cluster 2, but there are at least 6 samples plotted in the cluster in Figure 7.
P 12, l 10: Since it seems very unlikely that the high concentrations of Al, Ti, Fe and V discussed in this section originate from sea spray, perhaps those two words should be removed from the section heading.
P 12, l 12-14: There is no information in Figures 4-6 relevant to this sentence. Figure 3 should be cited instead.
P 12, l 27-29: This sentence is only accurate if event ‘E’ is excluded from “these fire events”. Please state this explicitly.
P 13, l 12-14: Please provide some citations to support the statements made in this sentence.
P 13, l 14-16: The end of this sentence “and the bioavailability of nano-Fe” does not make sense.
P 13, l 29-31: It is not obvious to me why the behaviour discussed in this sentence is “not surprising”. Please explain.
P 14, l 15: “coarser” (spelling).
P 14, l 20-21: I can see very little difference between the fractional Fe solubility of fire event ‘E’ and either dust event. What statistical tests were used to justify the statement made here?
P 14, l 32-33: delete “in water”.
P 14, l 33: delete “hence”.
P 15, l 2: “fractional” (spelling).
P 15, l 7: Hoffer et al. (2005) deals exclusively with aerosol optical properties. If it really contains relevant information to aerosol Fe solubility, please cite the ACP version of the manuscript, published in 2006.
P 15, l 15: “oxidation of”, not with.
P 15, l 19-22: Part ii) of this sentence does not make sense when joined to the start of the sentence.
P 16, l 8: There are some random words at the end of this sentence.
All through: Please use hyphens (e.g. biomass burning-derived). Their omission changes the meaning of your text.
Figure 4: Please adjust this figure. The dust and fire event bars do not line up with the data in the same way as the other plots.

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RR by Anonymous Referee #3 (11 Sep 2016)

ED: Reconsider after minor revisions (Editor review) (12 Sep 2016) by Sergey A. Nizkorodov

AR by Holly Winton on behalf of the Authors (21 Sep 2016) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Publish subject to technical corrections (23 Sep 2016) by Sergey A. Nizkorodov

AR by Holly Winton on behalf of the Authors (23 Sep 2016) Author's response Manuscript

Short summary

The deposition of soluble aerosol iron (Fe) can initiate nitrogen fixation and trigger toxic algal blooms in nitrate-poor tropical waters. We present dry season soluble Fe data from northern Australia that reflect coincident dust and biomass burning sources of soluble Fe. Our results show that while biomass burning species are not a direct source of soluble Fe, biomass burning may substantially enhance the solubility of mineral dust with fractional Fe solubility up to 12 % in mixed aerosols.