Ground-based MAX-DOAS observations of tropospheric aerosols, NO<sub>2</sub>, SO<sub>2</sub> and HCHO in Wuxi, China, from 2011 to 2014

Wang, Yang; Lampel, Johannes; Xie, Pinhua; Beirle, Steffen; Li, Ang; Wu, Dexia; Wagner, Thomas

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-17-2189-2017

Articles | Volume 17, issue 3

https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-17-2189-2017

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

https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-17-2189-2017

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

Articles | Volume 17, issue 3

Research article

|

13 Feb 2017

Research article |

| 13 Feb 2017

Ground-based MAX-DOAS observations of tropospheric aerosols, NO₂, SO₂ and HCHO in Wuxi, China, from 2011 to 2014

Yang Wang, Johannes Lampel, Pinhua Xie, Steffen Beirle, Ang Li, Dexia Wu, and Thomas Wagner

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Final revised paper (published on 13 Feb 2017)
Supplement to the final revised paper
Preprint (discussion started on 02 Jun 2016)
Supplement to the preprint

Interactive discussion

Status: closed

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

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RC1: 'Referee Comment', Anonymous Referee #2, 20 Jun 2016
- AC2: 'reply to Referee #2', Yang Wang, 18 Oct 2016
RC2: 'Review of Wang et al., Ground-based MAX-DOAS observations of tropospheric aerosols, NO2, SO2 and HCHO in Wuxi, China, from 2011 to 2014', Anonymous Referee #1, 10 Aug 2016
- AC1: 'reply to review 1', Yang Wang, 18 Oct 2016

Peer-review completion

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

AR by Yang Wang on behalf of the Authors (18 Oct 2016) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Referee Nomination & Report Request started (04 Nov 2016) by Andreas Richter

RR by Anonymous Referee #1 (21 Nov 2016)

Suggestions for revision or reasons for rejection

Dear authors,

Most of the referees comments have been addressed in the revised manuscript and the presentation quality regarding the number of figures is improved. However, the quality of the English used in the revised or new parts of the manuscript is very poor to my opinion. Although there will be corrections by ACP in the proofreading stage, I think the manuscript should be corrected before its acceptance for final publication. Here is my list of corrections (with respect to the marked-up version):

Page 6, line 2 : I would replace ‘Tropospheric vertical profiles (in the layer from the ground to the an altitude of 4 km) of aerosol extinctions and trace gases volume mixing ratios are retrieved from the SCDs by a use of the PriAM algorithm’ by ‘Tropospheric vertical profiles of aerosol extinctions and trace gases volume mixing ratios are retrieved from the ground surface to 4km altitude by using the PriAM algorithm’

Page 7, line 15: ‘averaging kernels (AKs)’ -> ‘AKs’

Page 8, line 5 : ‘and can be very different at different locations’ ->’and strongly depends on the location’

Page 9, lines 20-21: I would replace ‘Here it should be noted that AERONET Taihu station is located in a more remote area (from the downtown Wuxi) than the MAX-DOAS at Wuxi station. The different locations could contribute’ by ‘Here it should be noted that AERONET Taihu station is located in a more remote area (downtown Wuxi) than the MAX-DOAS instrument. This could contribute’
Page 9, line 23: ‘implied’ -> ‘illustrated’

Page 10, line 6: ‘for different seasons’ -> ‘for the different seasons’

Page 10, lines 8-9: ‘For the comparisons of AODs between from the MAX-DOAS and the AERONET sun photometer’ -> ‘For the comparisons of AODs between MAX-DOAS and AERONET sun photometer’

Page 10, line 32: ‘In spring, the worst correlation is found which might be related’ -> ‘The worst correlation is found in Spring, which might be related’

Page 11, line 8: ‘The higher R’ -> ‘The higher R value’

Page 12, lines 1-4: I would replace ‘Another point which needs to be clarified is that distinguishing “low aerosols” and “high aerosols” is based on the colour index observed by MAX-DOAS. Thus there is not an explicit AOD value which distinguishes both aerosol categories.’ by ‘It should be also noted that the distinction between “low aerosols” and “high aerosols” conditions is based on the colour index measured by the MAX-DOAS instrument, and not on explicit AOD threshold values’.

Page 13, lines 18-21: I would replace ‘This is especially true for the retrieved AOD. Especially large mean difference and worse correlation are found under “continuous clouds” for AOD (Fig. 9), and also the cloud effects on the retrieved AE profiles are significant (Fig. 8a)’ by ‘This is especially true for the retrieved AOD for which large mean difference and worse correlation are found under “continuous clouds” (see Fig. 9). The impact of clouds on the retrieved AE profiles is also significant, as illustrated in Fig. 8a’.

Page 13, lines 24-25: ‘are found in Fig 8c, e and g’ -> ‘are found, as can be seen in Figs. 8c, e, and g’

Page 13, line 26: ‘are found’ -> ‘are obtained’

Page 13, line 30: ‘conditions in Fig. 9’ -> ‘conditions, as shown in Fig. 9’

Page 13, line 34: ‘under’ -> ‘for’

Page 13, line 34: ‘imply the degraded performance’ -> ‘imply a degraded performance’

Page 14, line 1: ‘contribute’ -> ‘contributes’

Page 14, lines 3-5: I would replace ‘In this study, we decide to keep the MAXDOAS results under “high aerosol” condition in the following analysis because in spite of their lower accuracy they still provide important information.’ by ‘In this study, we decide to keep the MAXDOAS
retrievals under “high aerosol” condition because, despite of their
lower accuracy, they can still provide useful information.’

Page 14, lines 27-30: I would replace ‘The estimations of aerosol relevant errors are rough. A further studies need to be done to acquire a more reasonable estimation by considering aerosol properties, profiles of aerosols and TGs and observation geometries.’ by ‘These estimations are based on a linear propagation of the aerosols errors on the TG retrievals, which is a rough assumption. Additional sensitivity tests considering uncertainties on aerosol properties and profiles should be performed for the different viewing geometries in order to derive a more realistic error estimate.’

Page 21, line 21: ‘It indicates’ -> ‘It indicates that’

Page 24, line 17: I would replace ‘Although this study is local and rough, it still shows several general and important results:’ by ‘Although local, this study shows several general important features:

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ED: Reconsider after minor revisions (Editor review) (20 Dec 2016) by Andreas Richter

Dear Yang,

I'm pleased to accept your manuscript "Ground-based MAX-DOAS observations of tropospheric aerosols, NO2, SO2 and HCHO in Wuxi, China, from 2011 to 2014" for publication in ACP subject to minor revisions as detailed below. I apologize for the delay in the review process and thank you for your patience.

Please carefully consider the comments made by the anonymous reviewer. In addition, I have made a number of suggestions for corrections in the attached file. A few additional points are:

* please use the same y-scales in Figs. 6 and 9 (with the exception of number of points)

* please indicate what has been subtracted from what in the figure captions of figs. 6. 9, and 10

* please replace "hour of a day" by "hour of day" in Fig. 14

* check formatting of table 1

* please check the use of low aerosols / high aerosols in text and figure captions. This is confusing to the reader as what you mean is high / low aerosol load but could be misunderstood as aerosol located low / high in the atmosphere. Also please do not use plural for aerosol here.

* please move figure S30 back in the main text as you discuss it so the reader should find it in the manuscript itself

* personally, I do not see what your discussion of the geometric approximation adds to what is already in the literature. The shortcomings of this approximation are known and the separation of the differences into two terms does not add more information in my opinion

* in the discussion of Fig. 9 you state that under high aerosol situations, the deviations increase for all trace gases. However, for NO2 this is not the case - on the contrary, for NO2 this is the only scenario where correlation and slope are good!

Best regards,

Andreas

Comments to the Author: PDF

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AR by Yang Wang on behalf of the Authors (28 Dec 2016) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Publish as is (15 Jan 2017) by Andreas Richter

AR by Yang Wang on behalf of the Authors (24 Jan 2017)

Short summary

The air pollution in the Yangtze River delta (YRD), the largest economic region in China, threatens the health of the inhabitants in this region. A long-term MAX-DOAS observation in Wuxi, China (belonging to YRD), is used to characterize vertical distributions (VD) of the aerosols and the precursor trace gases in the boundary to identify the dominating sources. The results are valuable for further validation of satellite products and chemical transport modelings.