Measurement report: Diurnal and temporal variations  of sugar compounds in suburban aerosols from the  northern vicinity of Beijing, China – an influence  of biogenic and anthropogenic sources

Verma, Santosh Kumar; Kawamura, Kimitaka; Yang, Fei; Fu, Pingqing; Kanaya, Yugo; Wang, Zifa

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-21-4959-2021

Articles | Volume 21, issue 6

https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-21-4959-2021

© Author(s) 2021. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-21-4959-2021

© Author(s) 2021. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 21, issue 6

Measurement report

|

30 Mar 2021

Measurement report |

| 30 Mar 2021

Measurement report: Diurnal and temporal variations of sugar compounds in suburban aerosols from the northern vicinity of Beijing, China – an influence of biogenic and anthropogenic sources

Santosh Kumar Verma, Kimitaka Kawamura, Fei Yang, Pingqing Fu, Yugo Kanaya, and Zifa Wang

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Final revised paper (published on 30 Mar 2021)
Supplement to the final revised paper
Preprint (discussion started on 19 Aug 2020)

Interactive discussion

Status: closed

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

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- Supplement

RC1: 'referee comment on Verma et al. 2020', Anonymous Referee #1, 20 Oct 2020
- AC1: 'Reply on RC1', Santosh Verma, 27 Dec 2020
RC2: 'Review of Verma et al.', Anonymous Referee #2, 21 Oct 2020
- AC2: 'Reply on RC2', Santosh Verma, 27 Dec 2020

Peer-review completion

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

AR by Santosh Verma on behalf of the Authors (27 Dec 2020) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Referee Nomination & Report Request started (30 Dec 2020) by Lynn M. Russell

RR by Anonymous Referee #2 (10 Jan 2021)

Suggestions for revision or reasons for rejection

Verma et al. reports measurements of sugars collected on filters for about 3 months to determine the potential sources of the sugars. Though the authors addressed many of the comments from both reviewers, there are still concerns in regards to the methods and the interpretation of the data. Some of these concerns were brought up in the first set of reviews but were not addressed at all.

Major

1) It is not clear if they sampled any aerosol size < 100 um vs having a cut-off.

2) Since there is no denuder, what is the impact of condensation of semi-volatile gases onto the filters in the analysis? At least levoglucosan is known to partition between the gas and particle phase. This should be addressed as either a potential uncertainty/limitation if unknown or at least discussed if it is known the potential interference/impact it may have on the reported mass.

3) Though the author cite a reference on how OC, WSOC, and Ca2+ was measured/determined, the authors should still add a brief description so that readers do not have to dig through other papers. This can either be added to the main paper or SI, but a brief description in how these were measured would be beneficial for the overall paper.

4) It is still not clear how PMF was determined. What software was used? Were the solutions constrained? How were the solutions selected? At minimum, a time series of the solutions should be added.

5) As previously mentioned, looking at the average values, the standard deviation, and the number of measurements, many of the "day" "night" differences are not significantly different (student t-test, 95% confidence interval). This impacts the narrative throughout Sect. 3.1.

6) It is still unclear how biomass burning/levoglucosan is "higher" during night vs day (though as mentioned above, there is no statistical difference using a student t-test) as the wind is coming from the "forested" site instead of Beijing. Where is this source of biomass burning coming from?

Minor

1) It is beneficial to type exactly what you have changed in the responses to reviewers instead of asking them to dig through the document to find the changes. Also, it is unclear what, if any, sentences/sections were removed as only additions are highlighted.

2) Line 62 - 66: Sources of OA are misrepresented here, as majority of the OA originate from the photoxidation of gases into SOA (e.g., Jimenez et al, Science, 2009).

3) Line 170: Was the mass spec a quad or TOF? What was the resolution?

4) Fig. 5: I would recommend making the y-axis label that corresponds to Ca2+ the same color as it can be hard to interpret which axis corresponds to which data. Also, Ca2+ is not included in the caption.

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RR by Anonymous Referee #1 (11 Jan 2021)

ED: Publish subject to minor revisions (review by editor) (16 Jan 2021) by Lynn M. Russell

AR by Santosh Verma on behalf of the Authors (14 Feb 2021) Author's response Author's tracked changes Manuscript

ED: Publish as is (15 Feb 2021) by Lynn M. Russell

Post-review adjustments

AA: Author's adjustment | EA: Editor approval

AA by Santosh Verma on behalf of the Authors (26 Mar 2021) Author's adjustment Manuscript

EA: Adjustments approved (29 Mar 2021) by Lynn M. Russell

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Short summary

We studied aerosol samples collected in autumn 2007 with day and night intervals in a rural site of Mangshan, north of Beijing, for sugar compounds (SCs) that are abundant organic aerosol components and can influence the air quality and climate. We found higher concentrations of biomass burning (BB) products at nighttime than daytime, whereas pollen tracers and other SCs showed an opposite diurnal trend, because this site is meteorologically characterized by a mountain/valley breeze.