Temperature effects on sulfuric acid aerosol nucleation and growth: initial results from the TANGENT study

Tiszenkel, Lee; Stangl, Chris; Krasnomowitz, Justin; Ouyang, Qi; Yu, Huan; Apsokardu, Michael J.; Johnston, Murray V.; Lee, Shan-Hu

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-19-8915-2019

Articles | Volume 19, issue 13

https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-19-8915-2019

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

https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-19-8915-2019

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

Articles | Volume 19, issue 13

Research article

|

12 Jul 2019

Research article |

| 12 Jul 2019

Temperature effects on sulfuric acid aerosol nucleation and growth: initial results from the TANGENT study

Lee Tiszenkel, Chris Stangl, Justin Krasnomowitz, Qi Ouyang, Huan Yu, Michael J. Apsokardu, Murray V. Johnston, and Shan-Hu Lee

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Final revised paper (published on 12 Jul 2019)
Preprint (discussion started on 07 Jan 2019)

Interactive discussion

Status: closed

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

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- Supplement

RC1: 'Review of Tiszenkel et al.', Anonymous Referee #1, 03 Feb 2019
- AC1: 'Response to Anonymous Referee #1', Shan-Hu Lee, 16 Apr 2019
RC2: 'Review of Tiszenkel et al, Temperature Effects on Sulfuric Acid Aerosol Nucleation and Growth: Initial Results from the TANGENT Study', Anonymous Referee #2, 14 Feb 2019
- AC2: 'Response to Anonymous Referee #2', Shan-Hu Lee, 16 Apr 2019

Peer-review completion

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

AR by Shan-Hu Lee on behalf of the Authors (16 Apr 2019) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Referee Nomination & Report Request started (06 May 2019) by Kari Lehtinen

RR by Anonymous Referee #1 (07 May 2019)

RR by Anonymous Referee #2 (14 May 2019)

Suggestions for revision or reasons for rejection

While the authors were unable to address many of the previous serious criticisms of the paper during its first reviews, the analysis and presentation is significantly improved. The authors took the comments to heart and worked hard to address those that they were able to deal with in the absence of additional experiments.

Minor comments

In the abstract, the authors say “sulfuric acid nucleation….becomes barrierless below 268K”. This appears to be conflicting with previous findings, for example, those from the CLOUD experiment by Kuerten et al referred to on page 2 line 21, that nucleation rates of sulfuric acid with very low base contamination can be enhanced by ammonia at much lower temperatures. Perhaps it would be better to say “indicating that particle formation in the conditions of our flow tube takes place via barrierless nucleation at lower temperatures”

Also suggest “in the presence of SO2 and ozone, and potentially other contaminant vapors”.

Page 2 line 21: 5105 ->5 <times> 105; line 31 suggest “this”->”their” to distinguish the current and cited studies.
Page 3 line 20: in my previous review I was suggesting the authors refer to much more recent work from the North Atlantic NAAMES campaign, but these citations are still also valuable.
Page 5 i.d.->inner diameter
Page 7 “an identical condition”->”identical conditions”
Page 8 “consistent with”->”consistent with the studies of”; the sentence on lines 29-30 could be better phrased or deleted.
Page 9: Duplissy et al say nucleation is “close to kinetic” at 208K –I would not say this was “consistent” with the findings of the present study at 268K. I don’t think this matters for the science done in this paper, the sentence on lines 3-4 is simply incorrect and should be deleted. If Duplissy et al had made this assertion, wouldn’t it be inconsistent with the findings of Kuerten et al that ammonia strongly enhances particle formation even at low temperatures?
Page 9 line 27 remove extraneous “the”.
Line 29: is it correct to use “ph” for “sulphate” and “f” in “sulfuric acid”?
Page 10 line 4 remove extraneous “a”
The last paragraph and the earlier discussion of NPF in megacities seems rather speculative given the lack of understanding of the origin of the apparent SO2+ozone effect. Page 12 line 31 suggest “proposed here, if they can be repeated and fully understood in future studies, may provide some insights….”

Figure 2 caption: “as an example one day of measurements”
Figure 7 caption: “a constant”->”the same”

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ED: Publish subject to minor revisions (review by editor) (15 May 2019) by Kari Lehtinen

AR by Shan-Hu Lee on behalf of the Authors (25 May 2019) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Publish as is (20 Jun 2019) by Kari Lehtinen

Short summary

Understanding the processes surrounding the formation and growth of atmospheric aerosol particles is essential for understanding their effects on air quality, human health and cloud formation. Current atmospheric models neglect many essential variables that influence these processes. This study investigates temperature effects on new particle formation and the formation of clusters and their subsequent growth in differing temperature conditions.