Modelling carbonaceous aerosol from residential solid fuel burning with different assumptions for emissions

Ots, Riinu; Heal, Mathew R.; Young, Dominique E.; Williams, Leah R.; Allan, James D.; Nemitz, Eiko; Di Marco, Chiara; Detournay, Anais; Xu, Lu; Ng, Nga L.; Coe, Hugh; Herndon, Scott C.; Mackenzie, Ian A.; Green, David C.; Kuenen, Jeroen J. P.; Reis, Stefan; Vieno, Massimo

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-18-4497-2018

Articles | Volume 18, issue 7

https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-18-4497-2018

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

https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-18-4497-2018

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

Articles | Volume 18, issue 7

Research article

|

04 Apr 2018

Research article |

| 04 Apr 2018

Modelling carbonaceous aerosol from residential solid fuel burning with different assumptions for emissions

Riinu Ots, Mathew R. Heal, Dominique E. Young, Leah R. Williams, James D. Allan, Eiko Nemitz, Chiara Di Marco, Anais Detournay, Lu Xu, Nga L. Ng, Hugh Coe, Scott C. Herndon, Ian A. Mackenzie, David C. Green, Jeroen J. P. Kuenen, Stefan Reis, and Massimo Vieno

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Final revised paper (published on 04 Apr 2018)
Preprint (discussion started on 25 Aug 2017)

Interactive discussion

Status: closed

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

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RC1: 'Comments on manuscript', Anonymous Referee #1, 22 Sep 2017
- AC1: 'Responses to Referee #1', Riinu Ots, 01 Dec 2017
RC2: 'Review', Anonymous Referee #2, 29 Sep 2017
- AC2: 'Responses to Referee #2', Riinu Ots, 01 Dec 2017
RC3: 'Review', Anonymous Referee #3, 19 Oct 2017
- AC3: 'Responses to Referee #3', Riinu Ots, 01 Dec 2017

Peer-review completion

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

AR by Riinu Ots on behalf of the Authors (01 Dec 2017) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Referee Nomination & Report Request started (07 Dec 2017) by Michael Schulz

RR by Anonymous Referee #2 (23 Dec 2017)

Suggestions for revision or reasons for rejection

The authors have provided lengthy replies, but I am afraid I still have two main issues with this paper:

i) I do not believe the authors have adequately addressed my comments about volatilty. As explained below, they ignore the possibly very significant effect of evaporation of SFOA emissions. I would like to know what the UK POA emissions are, and to what extent they contain condensables. This is a reasonable request I think for a paper that focuses on such emissions from one country.

ii) The authors are responding to the referees, but often without any change in the paper (most replies to my comments were to me, not readers). The usual procedure is to change the paper to clarify the points raised by the referees, since one cannot expect readers to churn through the whole ACPD discussion.

In more depth on the first point, the authors comment that:

a) ..we have not ‘ignored’ the issue of volatility because it is not important but because it is not needed in this examination of spatial patterns and magnitudes of primary SFOA PM 2.5 emissions against primary SFOA measurements.

b) In this study we included the best-available county-by-country domestic sector PM2.5 emissions as reported to CEIP. This includes instances of countries that do report condensables as part of their PM emissions, e.g. Belgium (who report these as part of the total PM emissions, not separately), and countries that don’t. Without considerable more coordination of measurement and reporting it not possible to make any evidence-based adjustments to the CEIP emissions

While the statement in (a) about spatial patterns may be true, the one about magnitudes certainly is not. It would only be true if the emissions included in PM2.5 (especially in the UK) were indeed non-condensable. This may be true for some countries, and is not for others, but this paper does not demonstrate the UK situation in any way. The statement in (b) does not help, and the comments about European emissions are misleading I think. This study is not really about European emissions; the focus is very much on the UK and indeed London. With such a focus I would have expected a proper explanation of what the United Kingdom does with regard to reporting condensables or not in its PM2.5 inventory.

Did the authors speak to the emission inventory experts in the UK to clarify this problem?

It is not clear that the authors have understood the implications of condesable/semi-volatile POA concepts, since they only discuss (mainy in the reply to referees) aging. Evaporation is very likely te main issue with this work, not aging. According to May et al 2013, between 50-80% of the mass of POA from biomass burning may evaporate when diluted from plume to ambient conditions. The AMS instruments measure ambient air, so any study that ignores this will necessarily give too big a contribution from SFOA.

Finally, I also saw the other referees suggestion to remove the Marleybone road plot from Fig.13, and agree with this. Having stated that 'the modelled concentrations are not fairly comparable due to differences in spatial scale (major road vs 5 km model resolution)', there is no valid argument to comare I think. The authors suggest that one needs to illustrate the range of concentrations in a megacity, but plenty of other studies do that. And major roads have little to do with SFOA modelling.

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ED: Reconsider after major revisions (03 Jan 2018) by Michael Schulz

AR by Riinu Ots on behalf of the Authors (30 Jan 2018) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Referee Nomination & Report Request started (08 Feb 2018) by Michael Schulz

RR by Anonymous Referee #2 (15 Feb 2018)

ED: Publish subject to minor revisions (review by editor) (16 Feb 2018) by Michael Schulz

AR by Riinu Ots on behalf of the Authors (24 Feb 2018) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Publish as is (28 Feb 2018) by Michael Schulz

AR by Riinu Ots on behalf of the Authors (01 Mar 2018)

Short summary

The main hypothesis of this paper is that people who live in large cities in the UK disobey the smoke control law as it has not been actively enforced for decades now. However, the use of wood in residential heating has increased, partly due to renewable energy targets, but also for discretionary (i.e. pleasant fireplaces) reasons. Our study is based mainly in London, but similar struggles with urban air quality due to residential wood and coal burning are seen in other major European cities.