Contribution and uncertainty of sectorial and regional emissions to regional and global PM<sub>2.5</sub> health impacts

Crippa, Monica; Janssens-Maenhout, Greet; Guizzardi, Diego; Van Dingenen, Rita; Dentener, Frank

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-19-5165-2019

Articles | Volume 19, issue 7

https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-19-5165-2019

© Author(s) 2019. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Special issue:

Global and regional assessment of intercontinental transport...

https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-19-5165-2019

© Author(s) 2019. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 19, issue 7

Research article

|

16 Apr 2019

Research article |

| 16 Apr 2019

Contribution and uncertainty of sectorial and regional emissions to regional and global PM_2.5 health impacts

Monica Crippa, Greet Janssens-Maenhout, Diego Guizzardi, Rita Van Dingenen, and Frank Dentener

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Final revised paper (published on 16 Apr 2019)
Supplement to the final revised paper
Preprint (discussion started on 12 Sep 2017)
Supplement to the preprint

Interactive discussion

Status: closed

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

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- Supplement

SC1: 'References to previous work', Jørgen Brandt, 13 Sep 2017
- AC1: 'answer to short comment 1', Monica Crippa, 16 Feb 2018
SC2: 'Short comment', Negin Sobhani, 04 Oct 2017
- AC2: 'answer to short comment 2', Monica Crippa, 16 Feb 2018
RC1: 'review', Anonymous Referee #1, 26 Dec 2017
- AC3: 'answer to Review 1', Monica Crippa, 16 Feb 2018
- AC5: 'Reviewed Manuscript', Monica Crippa, 19 Feb 2018
- AC6: 'Supplementary material', Monica Crippa, 19 Feb 2018
RC2: 'Review of Crippa et al.', Anonymous Referee #2, 10 Jan 2018
- AC4: 'answers to Review 2', Monica Crippa, 16 Feb 2018
- AC7: 'Reviewed Manuscript', Monica Crippa, 19 Feb 2018
- AC8: 'Supplementary material', Monica Crippa, 19 Feb 2018

Peer-review completion

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

AR by Monica Crippa on behalf of the Authors (19 Feb 2018) Manuscript

ED: Referee Nomination & Report Request started (26 Mar 2018) by Katharine Law

RR by Anonymous Referee #2 (24 Apr 2018)

ED: Reconsider after major revisions (08 Nov 2018) by Katharine Law

AR by Monica Crippa on behalf of the Authors (12 Nov 2018) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Referee Nomination & Report Request started (30 Nov 2018) by Katharine Law

RR by Anonymous Referee #2 (21 Dec 2018)

RR by Anonymous Referee #1 (02 Feb 2019)

Suggestions for revision or reasons for rejection

The authors have done a good job responding to reviewer comments. They have brought in a lot more material from their companion paper on the model description and evaluation, which address reviewer concerns in those regards. I have a few remaining comments, described below, which amount to only minor changes to manuscript text and this minor revisions, after which point the paper will be suitable for publication in ACP.

Comments:

Presentation of the main equations still comes across as a bit folksy. The authors refer to it as “perturbation approach” — their quotes, not mine, sometimes double and sometimes single — but more rigorously I think as scientists they can more specifically refer to this as a first order approximation that includes the first (linear) term of a Taylor expansion of PM as a function of emissions. Without the remaining higher order terms the expression is approximate.

Further, the authors state “So the equal sign is correct, although this equation represents an approximation”, which is an oxymoron. The authors confuse discussion of a computational equation implemented in their model (which may well be approximate) and noting whether or not that equation is exact (with an equals sign) or an expression of an approximation (with an approximation sign). In this case it is the latter, and the equation on paper needs to be fixed to show this.

That being said, I appreciate the additional discussion added to the main text and the SI regarding the equations used for estimating PM responses owing to emissions perturbations, which have indeed helped make the manuscript stronger and more complete.

The additional content on model accuracy, again drawing from the companion paper, is now more detailed, which is appreciated.

The response regarding other sources of uncertainty — I appreciate the added discussion regarding model errors from Solazzo 2018. However my comments were with regards to uncertainties in the concentration-response functions, which are typically the only ones considered. Further, the response of the authors in this regard could still be much stronger. The title of this paper includes “uncertainty analysis”. However, the abstract only notes that the uncertainty analysis for health impacts was performed (last sentence), and does not even state the results. This is a big loss for this work — the authors should do a better job of capturing these quite interesting results (up to 1 million premature deaths uncertainty associated with emissions uncertainties?) in the abstract and conclusions, specifically in comparison to the level of uncertainty normally associated with these types of studies. The only other statement regarding uncertainty in the abstract (second to last sentence) is rather obvious and could be omitted, unless it is going to be quantified.

Regarding SOA, given the pace at which our understanding of how SOA forms has evolved, I’m not sure a 2010 paper (Farina) is “recent” anymore. But still, the discussion here is appreciated.

In response to my question about previous line 12.10 - 15 (“why doe these regions have large extra-regional contributions”), the response (health impacts are large because pollution is large) is a bit lacking. Why is it larger here, say, than other parts of the world? Is the long-range transport here particularly strong or efficient? I also wonder if the answer may have to do with underlying baseline mortalities being higher in some regions.

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ED: Publish subject to minor revisions (review by editor) (05 Feb 2019) by Katharine Law

AR by Monica Crippa on behalf of the Authors (25 Feb 2019)

ED: Publish as is (01 Apr 2019) by Katharine Law

AR by Monica Crippa on behalf of the Authors (02 Apr 2019)

Short summary

In this work we evaluate the contribution of the major anthropogenic emission sources to global air quality and human health, focusing on particulate matter (PM) concentrations because of their importance in populated areas and the proven cumulative negative effects on human health. We show that in order to improve air quality, regional policies should be implemented due to the transboundary features of PM pollution.

Contribution and uncertainty of sectorial and regional emissions to regional and global PM2.5 health impacts

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Contribution and uncertainty of sectorial and regional emissions to regional and global PM_2.5 health impacts