Atmospheric ammonia variability and link with particulate matter formation: a case study over the Paris area

Viatte, Camille; Wang, Tianze; Van Damme, Martin; Dammers, Enrico; Meleux, Frederik; Clarisse, Lieven; Shephard, Mark W.; Whitburn, Simon; Coheur, Pierre François; Cady-Pereira, Karen E.; Clerbaux, Cathy

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-20-577-2020

Articles | Volume 20, issue 1

https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-20-577-2020

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

https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-20-577-2020

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

Articles | Volume 20, issue 1

Research article

|

17 Jan 2020

Research article |

| 17 Jan 2020

Atmospheric ammonia variability and link with particulate matter formation: a case study over the Paris area

Camille Viatte, Tianze Wang, Martin Van Damme, Enrico Dammers, Frederik Meleux, Lieven Clarisse, Mark W. Shephard, Simon Whitburn, Pierre François Coheur, Karen E. Cady-Pereira, and Cathy Clerbaux

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Interactive discussion

Status: closed

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

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RC1: 'Review', Anonymous Referee #2, 29 Apr 2019
- AC1: 'Reply to referee 1', Camille Viatte, 04 Sep 2019
RC2: 'review of Viatte et al.', Anonymous Referee #1, 05 Jul 2019
- AC2: 'Reply to referee 2', Camille Viatte, 04 Sep 2019

Peer-review completion

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

AR by Camille Viatte on behalf of the Authors (04 Sep 2019) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Referee Nomination & Report Request started (11 Sep 2019) by Jayanarayanan Kuttippurath

RR by Anonymous Referee #2 (05 Oct 2019)

Suggestions for revision or reasons for rejection

The manuscript has been improved significantly and most of my comments have been carefully addressed by the authors.
I only have a few comments that pertain to the overall readability of the manuscript.
I recommend publications once these technical corrections are made.

line 41
when air masses are originated -> when air masses originate

line 44
specify unit for the lag

line 94
underestimates the NH3 budget -> do you mean the NH3 (surface?) concentration

line 120
limited in -> limited to

line 233
It evaluates -> it simulates?
There are other instances where sentences can be difficult to understand. Careful proofreading is needed.

Line 372, 375. Please provide p values. Relatively->also

Line 378. Please rephrase sentence.

Line 385. I would suggest to rephrase along these lines.
Overall, our results suggests that variability in meteorological and farming practices may play an important role in driving the large internannual variability in NH3 column observed by IASI and CrIS.

line 422
with low associated p-values of 1.5 10-5 (0.06) reflecting the significance level of the fits (not shown here) -> (p<0.1)

line 425-426
rather good is not quantitative.
Instead, you may want to convey that the correlation is weaker (0.29 and 0.14, respectively) and is not significant (p<0.1) against CrIS

line 432. r2=0.18 against CrIS. So it only captures ~20% of the monthly variability.

line 434. I don't understand what the authors mean here. What is the correlation between standard deviations (which is a scalar)?

line 495. associated with p-value of 6x10-133. -> it's probably enough to just write (p<0.05)

line 497. I assume that you are referring to the mean normalized bias?

line 526. Relatively correlated is not quantitative. If the correlation is significant (at p<0.05 or p<0.1), just state it.

line 527. I am puzzled with the +/- lag. Given the hypothesis that NH3 originates from Northern Europe, why consider +lag?

line 562. Which test did the author use to establish the significance? The mean of B falls within 1sigma of the mean of A.

Fig. 13. I suggest you reiterate the definition of A and B in the caption and refer to Fig. 12. Also indicate the number of observations used for each case

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RR by Anonymous Referee #1 (10 Oct 2019)

ED: Publish subject to minor revisions (review by editor) (29 Oct 2019) by Jayanarayanan Kuttippurath

Dear Authors:

Thank you for submitting the revised version of the manuscript.
The manuscript has improved significantly after the revision.
However, the presentation quality has still to be improved, as
also mentioned by the referees.

Therefore, please consider the following suggestions and
also the referee reports to revise the manuscript. The manuscript
can be published after addressing these issues. Please submit
an author response file too, when you submit the production ready files.

Thank you again,
Best,
Jayanarayanan

Please find my suggestions below:

Line 13-46: Abstract is too long, it would be good if you can shorten this.
Line 21: variability
Line 34: agreement on what?
Line 38: the importance of long-range transport
Line 42: use spring instead of springtime
Line 44: factors such as
Line 29: In terms of, in the case of, with respect to, Regarding are the alternatives of this “
In term of”
Line 64: protocol on reduction of ammonia? If yes, then please specify that.
Line 178: mean relative difference will not show the seasonal or any other bias in the measurements
Line 196-199: I do not understand this sentence. Please rephrase
Line 223-224: the sentence is not complete
Line 226: use “precipitation” and at other places
Line 234: “This makes a reasonable assumption …”
Line 298, line 539: Use “Note that” or “It should be noted that” something like this
Line 314: main region of mineral ..
Line 348: monthly mean anomaly is calculated with respect to the ten-year average data
Line 353: To further examine the analyses, ..
Line 367: What is fertilizer spreading?
Line 368: when the temperatures are relatively lower as in the case of 2012
Line 374: factors account for the higher NH3… (not parameters, but the factors or processes)
Line 413: model results is
Line 431: “First one can note that”? Write something like “It can be noted that” or “Note that..”
Line 471: outputs are
Line 481-485: difficult to understand, please rephrase
Line 483: “slight underestimation”
Line 494: Using the 10-years of ..
Line 531: difficult to quantify the “enough” here
Line 534: and case B
Line 536: 3 March, 19 March like that (in lines 540, 543, 544 too)
Line 546: a detailed analysis is made for the study period (not for the whole data sets)
Line 556: What are rare precipitations?
Line 557: northeast wind.

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AR by Camille Viatte on behalf of the Authors (12 Nov 2019) Author's response

ED: Publish as is (03 Dec 2019) by Jayanarayanan Kuttippurath

AR by Camille Viatte on behalf of the Authors (03 Dec 2019) Manuscript

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Short summary

We study concentrations and spatiotemporal variabilities of atmospheric NH₃ from the agricultural sector to gain insights on its effects on the Paris megacity air quality using satellite data from IASI and CrIS. We evaluate the regional CHIMERE model capacity to reproduce NH₃ and particulate matter (PM_2.5) concentrations and variabilities in the domain of study. We quantify the main meteorological parameters driving the optimal conditions involved in the PM_2.5 formation from NH₃ in Paris.