Simultaneous measurements of new particle formation at 1 s time resolution at a street site and a rooftop site

Zhu, Yujiao; Yan, Caiqing; Zhang, Renyi; Wang, Zifa; Zheng, Mei; Gao, Huiwang; Gao, Yang; Yao, Xiaohong

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-17-9469-2017

Articles | Volume 17, issue 15

https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-17-9469-2017

© 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-17-9469-2017

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

Articles | Volume 17, issue 15

Research article

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08 Aug 2017

Research article | Highlight paper |

| 08 Aug 2017

Simultaneous measurements of new particle formation at 1 s time resolution at a street site and a rooftop site

Yujiao Zhu, Caiqing Yan, Renyi Zhang, Zifa Wang, Mei Zheng, Huiwang Gao, Yang Gao, and Xiaohong Yao

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Final revised paper (published on 08 Aug 2017)
Supplement to the final revised paper
Preprint (discussion started on 02 Jan 2017)
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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, 11 Jan 2017
- AC1: 'Response to Anonymous Referee #1', Xiaohong Yao, 07 Apr 2017
RC2: 'Referee Comments', Anonymous Referee #2, 21 Jan 2017
- AC2: 'Response to Anonymous Referee #2', Xiaohong Yao, 07 Apr 2017
RC3: 'comments on "Simultaneous measurements of new particle formation in 1-second time resolution at a street site and a rooftop site"', Anonymous Referee #3, 24 Jan 2017
- AC3: 'Response to Anonymous Referee #3', Xiaohong Yao, 07 Apr 2017
RC4: 'Referee Comment', Anonymous Referee #4, 24 Jan 2017
- AC4: 'Response to Anonymous Referee #4', Xiaohong Yao, 07 Apr 2017
RC5: 'Referee Comments', Anonymous Referee #5, 30 Jan 2017
- AC5: 'Response to Anonymous Referee #5', Xiaohong Yao, 08 Apr 2017

Peer-review completion

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

AR by Xiaohong Yao on behalf of the Authors (03 May 2017) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Referee Nomination & Report Request started (06 May 2017) by Zhanqing Li

RR by Anonymous Referee #3 (15 May 2017)

Suggestions for revision or reasons for rejection

The manuscript was improved to some extent in the revision. However, there are some arguments/conclusions that needed to be further clarified.
1. The authors compared the number of their observations with the case of the gravitational wave in 2016 in response to reviewer 1. I have to say that the comparison is nevertheless meaningless and they cannot be compared in any way. The reviewer 1 raised a very important point that the authors aught to fully address. The authors present three evidences that support their conclusion. However, evidence one is ambiguous, i.e., the authors didn’t give any strong evidences that micro-meteorology played a minor role in their case and they just presented a general experienced judgement which was not supported by any data. Evidence two and three are not evidences at all. They are just a representation of the data or to be straight, they are just what the data look like. I have the same concern as reviewer one if a general conclusion can be drawn based on just one or two observations.
2. The authors emphasized many times on the importance of the instrument they employed. As far as I know, the fast mobility particle sizer has limited ability and limited applications so far. The data might have high uncertainties when the measurements were taken too fast compared to the traditional SMPS in term of accuracy of the sizes and concentrations.
3. The reginal nucleation event by its definition is an event representing regional phenomenon. I am quite doubtful that a lot of such events are observed in Beijing at the sites as used in this study. Otherwise the measurements only represent nucleation events in a very local scale, say the environment around the site.
4. The authors used the proxy to calculate sulfuric acid concentrations and discussed a little bit the role of sulfuric acid. However I didn’t see any presentation of the concentration or the detailed application of sulfuric acid concentrations. As discussed on p17, it is not clear when sulfuric acid should play a role quantitatively in Fig.9. The arguments seem to be speculative but I believe the authors should present a clearer picture to illustrate such an important point.
5. There are still lots of typos and ill-sentences that need to be proofread. A few examples:
1) Some of the picture captions are still not well written. For example, “the difference in number concentration” in Fig. 4 should be clearly defined in the caption. The readers don’t have to refer to the text when read the figure; wrong link provides in Fig. 1.
2) P5 and others, a lot of times “on day-day” was used, while “during day-day” was also used. I think it might be better to be consistent and “during day-day” might be better here.
3) P6: we write “cut a length of 2.8 m” not “cut as 2.8m in length; “in the supplementary” is enough to use, “document” in the “supplementary document” seems to be redundant. I believe there are still a lot in the text that the authors need to carefully edit.

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RR by Anonymous Referee #2 (21 May 2017)

ED: Reconsider after minor revisions (Editor review) (30 May 2017) by Zhanqing Li

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

ED: Reconsider after minor revisions (Editor review) (09 Jun 2017) by Zhanqing Li

AR by Xiaohong Yao on behalf of the Authors (22 Jun 2017) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Publish as is (03 Jul 2017) by Zhanqing Li

AR by Xiaohong Yao on behalf of the Authors (05 Jul 2017) Manuscript

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Short summary

This study reports the distinct effects of street canyons on new particle formation (NPF) under warm or cold ambient temperature conditions because of on-road vehicle emissions; i.e., stronger condensation sinks are responsible for the reduced NPF in the springtime, but efficient nucleation and partitioning of gaseous species contribute to the enhanced NPF in the wintertime. The oxidization of biogenic organics is suggested to play an important role in growing new particles.

Simultaneous measurements of new particle formation at 1 s time resolution at a street site and a rooftop site

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Peer-review completion

Simultaneous measurements of new particle formation at 1 s time resolution at a street site and a rooftop site