Evaluation of nitrogen oxides (NO<sub><i>x</i></sub>) sources and sinks and ozone production in Colombia and surrounding areas

Barten, Johannes G. M.; Ganzeveld, Laurens N.; Visser, Auke J.; Jiménez, Rodrigo; Krol, Maarten C.

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-20-9441-2020

Articles | Volume 20, issue 15

https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-20-9441-2020

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

https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-20-9441-2020

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

Articles | Volume 20, issue 15

Research article

|

12 Aug 2020

Research article |

| 12 Aug 2020

Evaluation of nitrogen oxides (NO_x) sources and sinks and ozone production in Colombia and surrounding areas

Johannes G. M. Barten, Laurens N. Ganzeveld, Auke J. Visser, Rodrigo Jiménez, and Maarten C. Krol

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Final revised paper (published on 12 Aug 2020)
Preprint (discussion started on 04 Nov 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, 03 Dec 2019
RC2: 'Review of Barten et al.', Anonymous Referee #2, 27 Jan 2020
AC1: 'Authors' Response to Referee Comments', Sjoerd Barten, 14 Apr 2020

Peer-review completion

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

AR by Sjoerd Barten on behalf of the Authors (14 Apr 2020) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Referee Nomination & Report Request started (25 Apr 2020) by Jason West

RR by Anonymous Referee #2 (08 May 2020)

RR by Anonymous Referee #1 (11 May 2020)

Suggestions for revision or reasons for rejection

Thank you for these revisions. Indeed a lot of work has gone into improving this; I appreciate it. I have one further minor revision request, and the rest are technical corrections.

Minor Request:
-Thank you for clarifying the SCM. Now that I have a somewhat better understanding of it and it's comparison to WRF-Chem, I have one additional request. I think it's necessary to include an intercomparison of the modeled PBLs in Figure 6. There should be a fifth panel (or perhaps the NO panel can be removed). In this additional panel, you should display the diurnal cycle of the WRF-Chem PBL and the SCM PBL (and ideally the ERA5 PBL too if possible) for the same time frame.

Technical Requests:
-Abstract: The abstract is too long as currently written. I understand that there is no word limit for this journal, but this Abstract could be more concise (ideally <400 words). Some specific suggestions would be to remove Line 9 - 17 starting with sentence "The comparison... mean column". Also, the last 8 lines, Lines 27 - 34 can be shortened significantly.

-Abstract: With all of that said, there is one missing item in the Abstract and it is the mention of anthropogenic NOx in comparison to the other sources. It would be helpful to include this near Line 7 (similar to how it is mentioned in the Conclusions near Line 430).

-Line 123: Comma between "areas" and "the"

-Line 168: "dependens" --> "depends"

-Line 201: I am a bit uneasy that the lower limit filter is 1 pixel (i.e., any location with 2+ pixels are included). It seems from Figure 2, that the limit could be 5 and a large fraction of the area would still be valid. Is there a reason why 1 pixel is the lower limit. For example is a particular city/location excluded if the lower filter limit is 5 instead? If so, please mention this in the text.

-Figure 3. Minor suggestion, but could be helpful to include the phase “AMF change” directly on the top center of the panel a, and the phrase “Column NO2 change” directly on the top center of panel b.

-Figure 4b. Thanks for addressing this figure caption, but I don’t think it’s perfectly clear yet. I see the dark orange color in the center of this panel, yet this color is not in the colorbar (biomass burning is closest but appears to be a light orange). The reason I am confused is that the dark orange, at first glance, seems to represent a combination of biomass burning and anthropogenic. Yet, your explanation makes it seem like the dark orange color is only biomass burning. Either way, dark orange is very hard to differentiate from red. Perhaps a way to remedy this, would be to make the biomass burning a brighter shade of yellow, so that it is clearly different from the other colors.

-Figure 5. Please write the word “NO2” somewhere on this figure, and in the figure caption. Also would be ideal to display the word “WRF-Chem NO2” directly on the top center of the panel a, and “OMI NO2” on the top center of panel b. And maybe “WRF-Chem - OMI” on panel c.

-Figures A1 & C1: It’s unclear why these are in an Appendix. If possible, it would be nice to include these in the main text when they are referenced. There is certainly room for them if the journal rules allow it.

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ED: Publish subject to minor revisions (review by editor) (23 May 2020) by Jason West

AR by Sjoerd Barten on behalf of the Authors (02 Jun 2020) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Publish as is (03 Jul 2020) by Jason West

Post-review adjustments

AA: Author's adjustment | EA: Editor approval

AA by Sjoerd Barten on behalf of the Authors (06 Aug 2020) Author's adjustment Manuscript

EA: Adjustments approved (11 Aug 2020) by Jason West

Short summary

Combining satellite and urban air pollution measurements with a meteorology and air quality model, we present the state of air quality in Colombia. We found four distinctly different emission regimes. The simulated pollution levels compare well with satellite data, but the comparison also indicates misrepresentation of prescribed fire emissions and simulated lightning emissions. Comparison of urban measurements requires careful consideration of (nocturnal) boundary layer dynamics and advection.

Evaluation of nitrogen oxides (NOx) sources and sinks and ozone production in Colombia and surrounding areas

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Interactive discussion

Peer-review completion

Post-review adjustments

Evaluation of nitrogen oxides (NO_x) sources and sinks and ozone production in Colombia and surrounding areas