An optimized tracer-based approach for estimating organic carbon emissions from biomass burning in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia

Nirmalkar, Jayant; Batmunkh, Tsatsral; Jung, Jinsang

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-20-3231-2020

Articles | Volume 20, issue 5

https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-20-3231-2020

© Author(s) 2020. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-20-3231-2020

© Author(s) 2020. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 20, issue 5

Research article

|

18 Mar 2020

Research article |

| 18 Mar 2020

An optimized tracer-based approach for estimating organic carbon emissions from biomass burning in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia

Jayant Nirmalkar, Tsatsral Batmunkh, and Jinsang Jung

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Final revised paper (published on 18 Mar 2020)
Preprint (discussion started on 27 Sep 2019)

Interactive discussion

Status: closed

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

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- Supplement

RC1: 'review', Anonymous Referee #1, 08 Nov 2019
- AC1: 'Reply to anonymous Referee #1', Jayant Nirmalkar, 04 Jan 2020
RC2: 'Intercative comment', Anonymous Referee #2, 11 Nov 2019
- AC2: 'Reply to anonymous Referee #2', Jayant Nirmalkar, 04 Jan 2020

Peer-review completion

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

AR by Jayant Nirmalkar on behalf of the Authors (04 Jan 2020) Author's response

ED: Referee Nomination & Report Request started (17 Jan 2020) by James Allan

RR by Anonymous Referee #1 (04 Feb 2020)

RR by Anonymous Referee #2 (06 Feb 2020)

Suggestions for revision or reasons for rejection

I was Referee #2 for the ACPD manuscript. The authors have reasonably addressed the first 3 of my 4 major comments. As to my major comment 4, reference to the study of Davy et al. (full reference: Davy, P.K., Gunchin, G., Markwitz, A., Trompetter, W.J., Barry, B.J., Shagjjamba, D., Lodoysamba, S., 2011. Air particulate matter pollution in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia: determination of composition, source contributions and source locations, Atmos. Poll. Res., 2, 126-137) should definitely be made. The authors' explanation for the large discrepancy between the contribution from biomass burning in PM2.5 in that study and in the current study is not very convincing. But if the authors do not want to elaborate on this discrepancy in their manuscript, they should at least refer to Davy et al. (2011) in the Introduction as an earlier study in Ulaanbatar, together with the studies of Jung et al. (2010) and Batmunkh et al. (2013), thus in lines 91-92. Since OC was not measured in Davy et al. (2011), "organic aerosol" in line 91 could then be replaced by "aerosol". Also, further within the manuscript's section 3.1, the authors could compare the PM2.5 K data of Davy et al. (2011) and the PM2.5 OC data of Jung et al. (2010) and of Batmunkh et al. (2013) with their own data.

Besides, I have the following (minor) comments:
1. Line 33: replace "study site" by "study sites".
2. Line 48: replace "power plant" by "power plants".
3. Line 60: replace "than those" by "than that".
4. Line 82: replace "A half of" by "Half of the".
5. Line 83: replace "dwelling)" by "dwellings)".
6. Line 85: replace "birch these" by "birch; these".
7. Line 89: replace "is very few estimate" by "are very few estimates".
8. Line 93: replace "and identify" by "and identified".
9. Line 120: replace "analyte has" by "analytes has".
10. Line 136: I disagree with the authors' reply that '"were analyzed" is more appropriate thus we retain it in revised MS'; samples are analyzed, but species, as is the case here, are measured; therefore, "were analyzed" should be replaced by "were measured".
11. Line 164: replace "percentile of" by "percentiles of".
12. Line 173: replace "PC)" by "PCs)".
13. Line 204: replace "5 that can" by "5; this can".
14. Line 208: replace "plant (Pei" by "plants (Pei".
15. Line 255: replace "results showed" by "results show".
16. Line 270: replace "as biomass burning tracers in" by "as a biomass burning tracer in".
17. Line 276: replace "tended to" by "tends to".
18. Line 284: replace "belongs to" by "belong to".
19. Line 359: replace "experiment (Cheng" by "experiments (Cheng".
20. Line 370: replace "thus it has lower" by "thus have lower".
21. Line 433: replace "mainly to" by "mainly due to".
22. Line 433: replace "Ashbaugh, L.L., Malm, W.C., Sadeh, W.Z." by "Ashbaugh, L. L., Malm, W. C., and Sadeh, W. Z.".
23. Lines 584-588: "Guttikanda, S., 2008" should come before "Guttikanda and Jawahar, 2014"; furthermore, for "Guttikanda, S., 2008", the authors should insert "SIM Working Paper No. 2008-005," after "Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia, ".
24. Line 687: replace "Q. and Yan" by "Q., and Yan".

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ED: Publish subject to minor revisions (review by editor) (06 Feb 2020) by James Allan

AR by Jayant Nirmalkar on behalf of the Authors (11 Feb 2020) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Publish subject to technical corrections (15 Feb 2020) by James Allan

AR by Jayant Nirmalkar on behalf of the Authors (18 Feb 2020) Author's response Manuscript

Short summary

We developed a novel tracer-based approach to optimize the organic carbon (OC) to levoglucosan ratio for estimating the precise concentration of OC emitted from biomass burning (OC_BB). Application of this ratio indicates that 68 % (winter) and 63 % (spring) of OC originated from BB. The approach developed here may be applied elsewhere to screen region-specific OC / levoglucosan ratios for estimating appropriate atmospheric concentrations of OC_BB, aiding the establishment of BB control measures.