Future changes in Beijing haze events under different  anthropogenic aerosol emission scenarios

Zhang, Lixia; Wilcox, Laura J.; Dunstone, Nick J.; Paynter, David J.; Hu, Shuai; Bollasina, Massimo; Li, Donghuan; Shonk, Jonathan K. P.; Zou, Liwei

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-21-7499-2021

Articles | Volume 21, issue 10

https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-21-7499-2021

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

https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-21-7499-2021

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

Articles | Volume 21, issue 10

Research article

|

18 May 2021

Research article |

| 18 May 2021

Future changes in Beijing haze events under different anthropogenic aerosol emission scenarios

Lixia Zhang, Laura J. Wilcox, Nick J. Dunstone, David J. Paynter, Shuai Hu, Massimo Bollasina, Donghuan Li, Jonathan K. P. Shonk, and Liwei Zou

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Final revised paper (published on 18 May 2021)
Supplement to the final revised paper
Preprint (discussion started on 12 Oct 2020)
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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: 'Reviewer Comments: Future changes in Beijing haze events under different anthropogenic aerosol emissions scenarios.', Anonymous Referee #1, 23 Nov 2020
- AC1: 'Reply on RC1', Lixia ZHANG, 18 Jan 2021
RC2: 'Future changes in Beijing haze events under different anthropogenic aerosol emission scenarios', Anonymous Referee #2, 01 Dec 2020
- AC2: 'Reply on RC2', Lixia ZHANG, 18 Jan 2021

Peer-review completion

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

AR by Lixia ZHANG on behalf of the Authors (20 Jan 2021) Author's response Author's tracked changes Manuscript

ED: Referee Nomination & Report Request started (22 Jan 2021) by Toshihiko Takemura

RR by Anonymous Referee #1 (08 Feb 2021)

RR by Anonymous Referee #2 (11 Feb 2021)

Suggestions for revision or reasons for rejection

Recommendation: The authors have tackled most of my criticisms, but a few remain unanswered/inconclusive. The main finding of the manuscript is interesting and important, but the overall work could be strengthened by addressing the below criticisms.

Specific Comments:

• I acknowledge that my previous ask: to assess whether the changes observed herein are present in the aerosol-only single forcing experiments are somewhat incongruent with the simulations described herein, i.e., different radiative forcing. However, I don’t think the authors should be so dismissive of their ability to test a similar hypothesis using these simulations. I feel that the manuscript would be substantially strengthened if the authors discussed this potential in a bit more depth in their discussion.

• The above comment is a piece of a larger comment/suggestion: the paper in general would be strengthened with a discussion of the various ways/future directions to prove the result. Such a discussion can be presented as caveats, or future work, but substantively discussing the issues of your signal v. internal variability and isolating the drivers of change with single-forcing experiments will strengthen the paper and provide some inspiration to future researchers that tackle this subject.

• I’m confused by the differences in date range choices. The NCDC & JRA analyses end in 2013. Models were run from 1965 to 2014 and 2016 to 2050. 1980 to 2004 is used as the baseline and 2016-2050 is used as the future. Please add explanation/justification for the lack of overlap in your analyses time choices.

• L94-97: Investigations of global air stagnation changes using the CMIP framework (3 and 5), with relevant projections over China, should be cited here https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/7/4/044034 & https://doi.org/10.1038/nclimate2272

• L210-222: Do you have a citation that indicates your bootstrapping procedure provides a reasonable estimate of the internal variability? If this is a method that you’ve devised, please provide evidence that this procedure adequately captures the underlying internal variability.

• The use of CMIP5 realizations to constrain internal variability does not make sense. The authors note that the structural uncertainty of the individual models confounds the attempt to isolate internal variability uncertainties when using a multi-model ensemble. This method did not end up in the manuscript, but its addition to the response in support of the bootstrap method is not justifiable.

• L210-219: As written, the bootstrap method seems to imply that 75 months of a possible 75 months are randomly sampled and averaged 2000 times. Would this not provide the same mean value 2000 times over? Should the method be listed as “bootstrapping with replacement”?

• L484-486: I identify these lines, and return to my first two bullet points regarding added discussion: I suggest turning these lines into a full discussion with citation from the literature working as a roadmap for further consideration. In my first review I provided some examples of relevant citations, but here are a few additions: single forcing (https://doi.org/10.1175/JCLI-D-20-0123.1), internal variability & large-ensembles (https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-020-0731-2)

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ED: Reconsider after major revisions (11 Feb 2021) by Toshihiko Takemura

AR by Lixia ZHANG on behalf of the Authors (08 Apr 2021) Author's response Author's tracked changes Manuscript

ED: Publish as is (10 Apr 2021) by Toshihiko Takemura

AR by Lixia ZHANG on behalf of the Authors (12 Apr 2021) Manuscript

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Short summary

The projected frequency of circulation patterns associated with haze events and global warming increases significantly due to weakening of the East Asian winter monsoon. Rapid reduction in anthropogenic aerosol further increases the frequency of circulation patterns, but haze events are less dangerous. We revealed competing effects of aerosol emission reductions on future haze events through their direct contribution to haze intensity and their influence on the atmospheric circulation patterns.