Cloud droplet activation of black carbon particles coated with organic compounds of varying solubility

Dalirian, Maryam; Ylisirniö, Arttu; Buchholz, Angela; Schlesinger, Daniel; Ström, Johan; Virtanen, Annele; Riipinen, Ilona

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-18-12477-2018

Articles | Volume 18, issue 16

https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-18-12477-2018

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

https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-18-12477-2018

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

Articles | Volume 18, issue 16

Research article

|

28 Aug 2018

Research article |

| 28 Aug 2018

Cloud droplet activation of black carbon particles coated with organic compounds of varying solubility

Maryam Dalirian, Arttu Ylisirniö, Angela Buchholz, Daniel Schlesinger, Johan Ström, Annele Virtanen, and Ilona Riipinen

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Final revised paper (published on 28 Aug 2018)
Preprint (discussion started on 04 Dec 2017)

Interactive discussion

Status: closed

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

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RC1: 'Review of the manuscript titled “Cloud droplet activation of black carbon particles coated with organic compounds of varying solubility” by Dalirian et al.', Anonymous Referee #1, 09 Feb 2018
- AC1: 'Response to reviewer #1', Maryam Dalirian, 03 May 2018
RC2: 'critical comments', Anonymous Referee #2, 18 Mar 2018
- AC2: 'Response to reviewer #2', Maryam Dalirian, 03 May 2018

Peer-review completion

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

AR by Maryam Dalirian on behalf of the Authors (17 Jun 2018) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Referee Nomination & Report Request started (18 Jun 2018) by Maria Cristina Facchini

RR by Anonymous Referee #1 (21 Jun 2018)

Suggestions for revision or reasons for rejection

The authors addressed my previous comments quite satisfactorily. I have only a couple of minor grammatical suggestions:

1. I think something is missing in the last sentence on the first page of the abstract (line 27 of page 10, specifically) starting with "Our results show potential ..." maybe I am just missing something, but I find it confusing.
2. Line 29 of page 11 in the sentence starting with "Investigating ambient BC particles have shown..." I think "have" should be "has" if the verb refers to "investigating".
3. Line 16 of page 13, in the sentence starting with " However, it should of course be borne in mind that in the ambient BC..." maybe a comma should be put in front of "BC"? Or am I reading this incorrectly? Meaning, is "ambient" a noun here or is an adjective to BC? I think the authors mean it to be a noun, otherwise, I am missing the meaning of the sentence... Less important, but a comma might also be needed after "of course"

In defense of this work, I want also to comment on the novelty and importance of the study. Although I am not necessarily an expert on the specific topic of CCN activity of BC particles, I do think that there is a real lack of well performed studies out there on this topic, especially regarding BC particles that are coated by other materials. Therefore, I think this study adds much needed information and new intellectual knowledge. I also think that performing laboratory studies on systems that might not be immediately relevant to atmospheric processes, but that can advance our understanding at the fundamental level of processes that might help improve our ability to untangle complex atmospheric processes, is as important as field studies might be, and should be welcome in a journal such as ACP, not discouraged. This is true especially if the relevance to atmospheric processes might become clear in the long term (for example, if this knowledge will result in a better ability of models to simulate how BC coated by atmospherically relevant material will behave as CCN), and I think in this paper the path forward is indeed quite clear. Even if the study would not be presenting totally new results (which again I think is not the case, here), I would still encourage the publication of the work, because it has been conducted well, and a foundation of science is repeatability. I think the best way to assure repeatability is indeed to repeat experiments, with some variations to add to new knowledge. This study does that and more. Overall it is a good paper that I think some of the ACP readerships will find interesting and useful to read.

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ED: Publish subject to technical corrections (22 Jun 2018) by Maria Cristina Facchini

AR by Ilona Riipinen on behalf of the Authors (04 Jul 2018) Author's response Manuscript

Short summary

Atmospheric black carbon (BC) particles are a concern due to their impact on air quality and climate. Their net climate effect is, however, still uncertain. In this study, laboratory measurements were performed to investigate cloud condensation nuclei (CCN) activity of BC particles, in pure state or coated by various organic species. Our results show that existing theories have potential in describing the CCN activation of atmospheric BC mixed with soluble pollutants.