Impacts of emission reduction and meteorological conditions on air quality improvement during the 2014 Youth Olympic Games in Nanjing, China

Huang, Qian; Wang, Tijian; Chen, Pulong; Huang, Xiaoxian; Zhu, Jialei; Zhuang, Bingliang

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-17-13457-2017

Articles | Volume 17, issue 21

https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-17-13457-2017

© Author(s) 2017. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.

Special issue:

Regional transport and transformation of air pollution in...

https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-17-13457-2017

© Author(s) 2017. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.

Articles | Volume 17, issue 21

Research article

|

13 Nov 2017

Research article |

| 13 Nov 2017

Impacts of emission reduction and meteorological conditions on air quality improvement during the 2014 Youth Olympic Games in Nanjing, China

Qian Huang, Tijian Wang, Pulong Chen, Xiaoxian Huang, Jialei Zhu, and Bingliang Zhuang

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Final revised paper (published on 13 Nov 2017)
Preprint (discussion started on 01 Mar 2017)

Interactive discussion

Status: closed

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

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RC1: 'This manuscript needs improvement on its English', Anonymous Referee #1, 10 Mar 2017
- AC1: 'Responses to the reviewer’s comments', Qian Huang, 08 Jun 2017
RC2: 'This manuscript needs a major revision', Anonymous Referee #2, 16 Mar 2017
- AC2: 'Responses to the reviewer’s comments', Qian Huang, 08 Jun 2017
RC3: 'Interactive comment on “Impacts of emission reduction and meteorological conditions on air quality improvement during the 2014 Youth Olympic Games in Nanjing, China” by Qian Huang et al.', Anonymous Referee #3, 28 Mar 2017
- AC3: 'Responses to the reviewer’s comments', Qian Huang, 08 Jun 2017

Peer-review completion

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

AR by Qian Huang on behalf of the Authors (08 Jun 2017) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Referee Nomination & Report Request started (26 Jun 2017) by Tong Zhu

RR by Anonymous Referee #1 (07 Jul 2017)

RR by Anonymous Referee #2 (15 Jul 2017)

Suggestions for revision or reasons for rejection

The authors replied to most of my concerns and revised the manuscript partly according to my comments. The manuscript was improved but there are still some points to be clarified. I comment on their responses one by one as follows:

1. I don't think the 9 sites around downtown can represent the whole Nanjing, but I understand the possible limitation of available observation for this study.

2. Although only PM2.5 observational data is presented in this study, I still suggest you present model simulated changes in both primary and secondary PM2.5 due to emission reduction, which may help explain the weak PM2.5 response (just 9.8%), I also think that discussion about PM2.5 components will make the manuscript to be more comprehensive.

3. How to explain the increase of SO2 concentration (5.1%) although SO2 emission is reduced by 22.1% in August compared with July 2014? what's the meaning of "unpredictable emissions"? based on the difference between the two sensitivity runs, the increasing SO2 concentration with reduction of SO2 emission looks strange, please give more discussion here.

4. " This paper tries to discuss the overall impact of meteorological conditions ...... partial decrease is not that important". I am not satisfied with the response, although SO2, NO2, PM10, PM2.5, CO, and O3 concentrations increased in terms of domain average, there are large areas of concentration decrease for these species, especially for O3, which require a detailed analysis of these changes in response to variations of meteorological variables and chemical reactions (such as temperature, cloud, PBL etc.)

5. The authors corrected errors in Fig. 8 by reruning the model using corrected emission inventory.

6. From the figure 10, a clear impression is emission reduction has little effect on reducing PM2.5 (PM10) level in Nanjing, which appear not to support the conclusion in this manuscript " emission reduction is the dominant factor of the air quality improvement during the YOG". Besides, in fig. 10, the changes due to emission reduction is hardly to see for species other than SO2 and NOx, is it possible to use different scales for the changes from meteorology and emission reduction?

7. It's ok to keep the tables if the authors think they are necessary.

8. The authors clarify the questions.

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RR by Anonymous Referee #3 (15 Jul 2017)

ED: Reconsider after major revisions (24 Jul 2017) by Tong Zhu

AR by Qian Huang on behalf of the Authors (07 Sep 2017) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Referee Nomination & Report Request started (19 Sep 2017) by Tong Zhu

RR by Anonymous Referee #2 (22 Sep 2017)

ED: Publish subject to technical corrections (22 Sep 2017) by Tong Zhu

AR by Qian Huang on behalf of the Authors (29 Sep 2017) Author's response Manuscript

Short summary

This paper investigate the important factor contributing to the improvement of air quality of Nanjing, China, during the 2nd Youth Olympic Games, held in August, 2014. The interesting finding is that meteorological factors are not beneficial to air quality during the YOG. However, emission reduction plays a more important role, which suggest that emission reduction is an effective way to cut air pollution levels for social events.