Temporally delineated sources of major chemical species in high Arctic snow

Macdonald, Katrina M.; Sharma, Sangeeta; Toom, Desiree; Chivulescu, Alina; Platt, Andrew; Elsasser, Mike; Huang, Lin; Leaitch, Richard; Chellman, Nathan; McConnell, Joseph R.; Bozem, Heiko; Kunkel, Daniel; Lei, Ying Duan; Jeong, Cheol-Heon; Abbatt, Jonathan P. D.; Evans, Greg J.

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-18-3485-2018

Articles | Volume 18, issue 5

https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-18-3485-2018

© Author(s) 2018. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Special issue:

NETCARE (Network on Aerosols and Climate: Addressing Key Uncertainties...

https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-18-3485-2018

© Author(s) 2018. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 18, issue 5

Research article

|

09 Mar 2018

Research article |

| 09 Mar 2018

Temporally delineated sources of major chemical species in high Arctic snow

Katrina M. Macdonald, Sangeeta Sharma, Desiree Toom, Alina Chivulescu, Andrew Platt, Mike Elsasser, Lin Huang, Richard Leaitch, Nathan Chellman, Joseph R. McConnell, Heiko Bozem, Daniel Kunkel, Ying Duan Lei, Cheol-Heon Jeong, Jonathan P. D. Abbatt, and Greg J. Evans

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Final revised paper (published on 09 Mar 2018)
Supplement to the final revised paper
Preprint (discussion started on 14 Aug 2017)
Supplement to the preprint

Interactive discussion

Status: closed

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

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- Supplement

RC1: 'Referee comment', Anonymous Referee #1, 07 Sep 2017
- AC1: 'Response to Anonymous Referee #1', Katrina Macdonald, 16 Dec 2017
RC2: 'Review of Macdonald et al', Anonymous Referee #2, 25 Sep 2017
- AC2: 'Response to Anonymous Referee #2', Katrina Macdonald, 16 Dec 2017
RC3: 'Referee comments', Anonymous Referee #3, 23 Oct 2017
- AC3: 'Response to Anonymous Referee #3', Katrina Macdonald, 16 Dec 2017

Peer-review completion

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

AR by Katrina Macdonald on behalf of the Authors (16 Dec 2017) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Referee Nomination & Report Request started (22 Dec 2017) by Lynn M. Russell

RR by Anonymous Referee #1 (04 Jan 2018)

Suggestions for revision or reasons for rejection

I have just a small number of editorial comments on this version. For main text these are referenced to page #/line #, in Supplemental it will be Section # and paragraph in that section.

1/5 "this rich data provided" should be either: this rich data set, or these rich data

5/13 "limited number of snow samples measurements" should be either: snow sample measurements, or snow samples measured

Table 1 (and many times after) MSA is typically used to refer to methysulfonic acid. MS^- is used to refer to methylsulfonate (which is what is measured by IC in melted snow)

Figure 1. Still unclear to me what the grey bars signify in this plot. If this is mass of analyte attributed to the factor, is it correct that calculating the ratio of the bar in one factor (for given analyte) over the sum of the 7 bars for that analyte would be the same as percentage shown with diamonds (on the other axis)? If yes, the bars add no information.

11/12 use of "enrichment ratios" thoughout section 3.2 is a little confusing. In this instance Cl/Na and K/Na have some precedent in the literature where enrichment factors defined as X/ssRef or X/crustalRef are used to assess whether X seems dominated by natural or anthropogenic sources. In this sense, comparing As/Al in snow to the ratio in "global typical" make sense as enrichment ratio, but the comparison to As/Al in local soil not so much. Likewise SO4/BC and NO3/BC are just ratios, since there is not really an accepted global mean composition of BB smoke (depends on way too many factor like fire stage, fuel type, moisture, etc.)

19/20 "within the northern Eurasia"---> within northern Eurasia

22/1-3 some kind of cut and paste error here, seems words are missing

Supplemental

S1.1 camo activities--->camp activites
were used to dividing the--->were used to divide

S3.2 (under Fig S5)
with the exception of that--->with the exception that
As discussed in Chapter 5--->As discussed in 3.2.7 in main text

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RR by Anonymous Referee #3 (26 Jan 2018)

ED: Publish subject to technical corrections (26 Jan 2018) by Lynn M. Russell

AR by Katrina Macdonald on behalf of the Authors (03 Feb 2018) Author's response Manuscript

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Short summary

The sources of key contaminants in Arctic snow may be an important factor in understanding the rapid climate changes observed in the Arctic. Fresh snow samples collected frequently through the winter season were analyzed for major constituents. Temporally refined source apportionment via positive matrix factorization in conjunction with FLEXPART suggested potential source characteristics and locations. The identity of these sources and their relative contribution to key analytes is discussed.