Characterization of aerosol hygroscopicity, mixing state, and CCN activity at a suburban site in the central North China Plain

Wang, Yuying; Li, Zhanqing; Zhang, Yingjie; Du, Wei; Zhang, Fang; Tan, Haobo; Xu, Hanbing; Fan, Tianyi; Jin, Xiaoai; Fan, Xinxin; Dong, Zipeng; Wang, Qiuyan; Sun, Yele

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-18-11739-2018

Articles | Volume 18, issue 16

https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-18-11739-2018

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

Special issue:

Regional transport and transformation of air pollution in...

https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-18-11739-2018

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

Articles | Volume 18, issue 16

Research article

|

17 Aug 2018

Research article |

| 17 Aug 2018

Characterization of aerosol hygroscopicity, mixing state, and CCN activity at a suburban site in the central North China Plain

Yuying Wang, Zhanqing Li, Yingjie Zhang, Wei Du, Fang Zhang, Haobo Tan, Hanbing Xu, Tianyi Fan, Xiaoai Jin, Xinxin Fan, Zipeng Dong, Qiuyan Wang, and Yele Sun

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Preprint (discussion started on 08 Jan 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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RC1: 'Review on “Characterization of aerosol hygroscopicity, mixing state, and CCN activity at a suburban site in the North China Plain” by Wang et al.', Anonymous Referee #2, 22 Jan 2018
- AC1: 'Reply to RC1', Zhanqing Li, 28 Mar 2018
RC2: 'Interactive comment on "Characterization of aerosol hygroscopicity, mixing state, and CCN activity at a suburban site in the central North China Plain"', Anonymous Referee #1, 11 Mar 2018
- AC2: 'Reply to RC2', Zhanqing Li, 28 Mar 2018
AC2: 'Reply to RC2', Zhanqing Li, 28 Mar 2018

Peer-review completion

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

AR by Zhanqing Li on behalf of the Authors (28 Mar 2018) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Referee Nomination & Report Request started (05 Apr 2018) by Renyi Zhang

RR by Anonymous Referee #2 (25 Apr 2018)

RR by Anonymous Referee #1 (02 May 2018)

Suggestions for revision or reasons for rejection

For the response to general comment 2: I did not say that there is no connection between HTDMA and CCN measurements. What I suggested is to make a smoother transition from the HTDMA part (4.1 to 4.3.2) to CCN part (4.3.3 and 4.4).

For the response to specific comments L156 and L164: I suggest the authors also add this information to the main text to help audience better understand your measurements.

For the response to specific comment L181: from the information provided in the main text and this response, what I understand is:
Calibration of flow and SS was “conducted before this campaign and the corresponding parameters were applied in the system”
Then, “Five SS levels, i.e., 0.07, 0.1, 0.2, 0.4, and 0.8 %, were set in the CCNC”
Another SS calibration was done after the campaign and “The calibrated SS used in this paper was from the mean SS of two calibration results”
“The corrected SS levels were 0.11, 0.13, 0.22, 0.40, and 0.75 %, respectively”
It means that with the five deltT (calculated internally in CCN according to the calibration parameters from first calibration), the actual SS changed from the original values (0.07, 0.1, 0.2, 0.4, and 0.8 %) before the campaign to 0.15%, 0.16%, 0.24%, 0.4% and 0.7% at the end of the campaign. But this is not what I saw in the calibration curves shown in the response.
This is also why I suggested another “major revisions”. I think the authors should clarify this before the manuscript can be considered for final publication.

For the response to specific comment L183 and L387: with measured PNSD and CCN total number concentration, critical diameter can be calculated as the diameter above which the integration of PNSD equals to the CCN number concentration. This treatment has been used in several studies (e.g. Deng et al., 2013). The advantage is it excludes the influence of the variation of PNSD in the inferred CCN activities, compared with AR.

For the response to specific comment L407: I think deleting the sentence will not change the reality that “PM1 composition differ greatly from 40-200 nm particles” as reflected in fig 6.

For the response to specific comment L434: What I want to point out is, here you can not really prove that 0.31 is a good proxy for the calculation of Nccn. Because as shown in fig. 6, PM1 composition differ greatly from 40-200 nm particles. Probably a kappa of 0.25 or 0.35 can bring similar results just because Nccn is not sensitive on kappa.

For the response to specific comment L437: I was not against this statement. I fully agree with it. What I wanted to say is you should not put it in your conclusion since you did not prove it in this section.

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ED: Reconsider after major revisions (03 May 2018) by Renyi Zhang

AR by Zhanqing Li on behalf of the Authors (06 Jun 2018) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Referee Nomination & Report Request started (22 Jun 2018) by Yuan Wang

RR by Anonymous Referee #1 (11 Jul 2018)

ED: Publish subject to technical corrections (11 Jul 2018) by Yuan Wang

AR by Zhanqing Li on behalf of the Authors (16 Jul 2018) Author's response Manuscript

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Short summary

Very different aerosol hygroscopicities and mixing states were found at these sites in the North China Plain. The PDF for 40–200 nm particles showed the particles were highly aged and internally mixed at Xingtai because of high pollution and strong photochemical reactions. A good proxy for the chemical comical composition (kappa = 0.31) in calculating CCN concentration was found. Importantly, our study investigated the influence of industrial emissions on the aerosol properties.