Exploration of PM<sub>2.5</sub> sources on the regional scale in the Pearl River Delta based on ME-2 modeling

Huang, Xiao-Feng; Zou, Bei-Bing; He, Ling-Yan; Hu, Min; Prévôt, André S. H.; Zhang, Yuan-Hang

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-18-11563-2018

Articles | Volume 18, issue 16

https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-18-11563-2018

© Author(s) 2018. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-18-11563-2018

© Author(s) 2018. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 18, issue 16

Research article

|

16 Aug 2018

Research article |

| 16 Aug 2018

Exploration of PM_2.5 sources on the regional scale in the Pearl River Delta based on ME-2 modeling

Xiao-Feng Huang, Bei-Bing Zou, Ling-Yan He, Min Hu, André S. H. Prévôt, and Yuan-Hang Zhang

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Final revised paper (published on 16 Aug 2018)
Supplement to the final revised paper
Preprint (discussion started on 20 Mar 2018)
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Interactive discussion

Status: closed

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

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- Supplement

RC1: 'Review of Huang et al., acp-2018-257', Anonymous Referee #1, 14 Apr 2018
- AC1: 'Reply to review 1', X.F. Huang, 25 Jun 2018
RC2: 'Comments on Exploration of PM2.5 sources on the regional scale in the Pearl River Delta based on ME-2 modeling', Anonymous Referee #2, 30 Apr 2018
- AC2: 'Reply to review 2', X.F. Huang, 25 Jun 2018

Peer-review completion

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

AR by X.F. Huang on behalf of the Authors (26 Jun 2018) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Referee Nomination & Report Request started (26 Jun 2018) by James Allan

RR by Anonymous Referee #1 (14 Jul 2018)

Suggestions for revision or reasons for rejection

General comments:
The authors have responded to the comments from both reviewers and although the revisions were not major from either reviewer, the authors have improved the manuscript in multiple places. A couple of small revisions are recommended before final publication in ACP.

Specific comments:
Page 7, line 223: Please explain either here or in the supplement what explained variations mean/represent so that it is clear whether a low or high percentage is preferable for the chosen factor.

Page 7, lines 221-227: This section is not clear in terms of how the values presented as EVs compare to the figures. In the figures (e.g. Fig. S7), concentration and percent of species are plotted but EV is not.

Page 11, lines 354-357: The authors should clarify how the SOA factor is extracted. Perhaps clarify by adding text to the supplement or a brief sentence or two in the main text.

Page 20, lines 581-584: The authors may wish to clarify in the conclusions that the four months of sampling were conducted to represent each of the four seasons during the year thus representing the annual PM2.5 pollution.

Minor and technical corrections:
Page 4, lines 104-105: Remove ‘for’ so the sentence reads ‘the six samplers used sampled in parallel three times’.

Page 4, lines 106-108: Please rephrase this sentence as it is currently not clear what is meant. Were Teflon filters put into boxes made of the same material? Perhaps the sentence can be simplified or even removed unless this step is critical to the sampling handling process.

Page 4, line 115: The authors may want to consider writing QA/QC out in full here and elsewhere in the manuscript/supplement to avoid confusion with the ‘QA’ used for the Qi-Ao island site.

Page 7, line 210: A space is needed between ‘to’ and ‘12’ to read ‘factor numbers from 3 to 12…’.

Page 8, line 278: Please change ‘well’ to something else, perhaps so the sentence reads ‘…higher in winter and lower in summer, which is consistent with the seasonal variations of monsoon…’.

Page 13, line 378: Change ‘due to its being located’ to ‘due to the site being located’.

Page 14, Table 6: Guangzhou is listed twice in this table as being this study but there are two different periods. Perhaps the authors would like to clarify the exact time periods. Is the 2015.1-2015.11 period actually the four months of study during this whole time period and then the 2015.1-2015.2 is one of those four months?

Supplement page 7, Fig. S4: The authors may wish to include axis labels for the latitude and longitude.

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ED: Publish subject to minor revisions (review by editor) (15 Jul 2018) by James Allan

AR by X.F. Huang on behalf of the Authors (23 Jul 2018) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Publish as is (24 Jul 2018) by James Allan

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Short summary

A novel multilinear engine (ME-2) model was applied to the PM_2.5 dataset observed in the Pearl River Delta (PRD) of China in 2015 and identified the sources of secondary sulfate (21 %), vehicle emissions (14 %), industrial emissions (13 %), secondary nitrate (11 %), biomass burning (11 %), secondary organic aerosol (7 %), coal burning (6 %), fugitive dust (5 %), ship emissions (3 %) and aged sea salt (2 %). The central PRD area was clearly identified as the key emission area in the PRD.

Exploration of PM2.5 sources on the regional scale in the Pearl River Delta based on ME-2 modeling

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Interactive discussion

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Exploration of PM_2.5 sources on the regional scale in the Pearl River Delta based on ME-2 modeling