Using TES retrievals to investigate PAN in North American  biomass burning plumes

Fischer, Emily V.; Zhu, Liye; Payne, Vivienne H.; Worden, John R.; Jiang, Zhe; Kulawik, Susan S.; Brey, Steven; Hecobian, Arsineh; Gombos, Daniel; Cady-Pereira, Karen; Flocke, Frank

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-18-5639-2018

Articles | Volume 18, issue 8

https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-18-5639-2018

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

https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-18-5639-2018

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

Articles | Volume 18, issue 8

Research article

|

24 Apr 2018

Research article |

| 24 Apr 2018

Using TES retrievals to investigate PAN in North American biomass burning plumes

Emily V. Fischer, Liye Zhu, Vivienne H. Payne, John R. Worden, Zhe Jiang, Susan S. Kulawik, Steven Brey, Arsineh Hecobian, Daniel Gombos, Karen Cady-Pereira, and Frank Flocke

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Final revised paper (published on 24 Apr 2018)
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Preprint (discussion started on 06 Nov 2017)
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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 of "The Contribution of Fires to TES Observations of Free Tropospheric PAN over North America in July"', Anonymous Referee #1, 16 Nov 2017
- AC1: 'Response 1', Emily Fischer, 13 Feb 2018
RC2: ''Review of "The Contribution of Fires to TES Observations of Free Tropospheric PAN over North America in July"'', Anonymous Referee #2, 21 Dec 2017
- AC2: 'Response 2', Emily Fischer, 13 Feb 2018

Peer-review completion

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

AR by Emily Fischer on behalf of the Authors (13 Feb 2018) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Referee Nomination & Report Request started (14 Feb 2018) by Ronald Cohen

RR by Anonymous Referee #1 (15 Feb 2018)

RR by Anonymous Referee #2 (26 Feb 2018)

Suggestions for revision or reasons for rejection

The title and abstract of this manuscript suggest that one is able to identify and quantify the influence of biomass burning emissions on PAN distributions using TES v7 retrievals. The body of the text did not convince me that this is the case. The abstract and the title need to better reflect the findings of the paper.

Please consider changing the title to something more along the lines of “Are PAN enhancements in NA biomass plumes detectable in TES retrievals?”

Abstract:

“We find that 15 – 32 % of cases where elevated PAN is identified in TES observations (retrievals with DOF > 0.6) overlap smoke plumes” – Please add text defining what the range represents, and add the finding that 18% of all retrievals overlap HMS smoke extent.

“Using aircraft observations from the Colorado Front Range, we demonstrate that TES can be sensitive to elevated PAN in the boundary layer even in the presence of clouds.” – indicate that the in-situ observations were located at ~750 hPa.

Main text:

L290 – “Of all the retrievals attempted in July 2006 to July 2009, the percent associated with smoke is 18%. We expect a higher fraction of overlap in the subset of data with DOF > 0.6. (XX%)” – Please add your quantitative findings here.

Minor comments:
L137 TES is capable of measuring elevated PAN (detection limit ~ 0.2 ppbv) in the free troposphere, with uncertainty of 30-50 %. Citation? Validation?

L170-189 – are these findings broadly consistent with what we already know? please include citations

L204 - In the case study presented, the PAN enhancement is located at ~750 hPa. I presume the author's comment "below 800 hPa" refers to larger pressures, or lower altitudes.

L318 – “We show the PAN distribution for in-smoke cases that also coincide with TES 510hPa CO > 120 ppbv and TES 510hPa CO > 150 ppbv. There are differences between these subsets of data and the not-in smoke cases.” To make the above claim that PAN retrievals are enhanced in smoke, and not just enhanced where CO is enhanced, you should control for CO retrievals in both in-smoke and not-in-smoke categories.

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ED: Publish subject to minor revisions (review by editor) (26 Feb 2018) by Ronald Cohen

AR by Emily Fischer on behalf of the Authors (02 Mar 2018) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Publish as is (02 Mar 2018) by Ronald Cohen

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Short summary

PAN is an atmospheric reservoir for nitrogen oxide radicals, and it plays a lead role in their redistribution in the troposphere. We analyze new Tropospheric Emission Spectrometer (TES) PAN observations over North America during July 2006 to 2009. We identify smoke-impacted TES PAN retrievals by co-location with NOAA Hazard Mapping System (HMS) smoke plumes. Depending on the year, 15–32 % of cases where elevated PAN is identified in TES observations overlap with smoke plumes.