Amines in boreal forest air at SMEAR II station in Finland

Hemmilä, Marja; Hellén, Heidi; Virkkula, Aki; Makkonen, Ulla; Praplan, Arnaud P.; Kontkanen, Jenni; Ahonen, Lauri; Kulmala, Markku; Hakola, Hannele

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-18-6367-2018

Articles | Volume 18, issue 9

https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-18-6367-2018

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

https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-18-6367-2018

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

Articles | Volume 18, issue 9

Research article

|

04 May 2018

Research article |

| 04 May 2018

Amines in boreal forest air at SMEAR II station in Finland

Marja Hemmilä, Heidi Hellén, Aki Virkkula, Ulla Makkonen, Arnaud P. Praplan, Jenni Kontkanen, Lauri Ahonen, Markku Kulmala, and Hannele Hakola

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Final revised paper (published on 04 May 2018)
Supplement to the final revised paper
Preprint (discussion started on 17 Oct 2017)

Interactive discussion

Status: closed

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

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- Supplement

RC1: 'Anonymous Referee', Anonymous Referee #1, 14 Nov 2017
- AC1: 'Final response to the Referee 1 comments', Marja Hemmilä, 31 Jan 2018
RC2: 'Amines in Boreal Forest Air at SMEAR II Station in Finland', Anonymous Referee #2, 16 Nov 2017
- AC2: 'Responce to Referee 2', Marja Hemmilä, 31 Jan 2018
RC3: 'Comments on “Amines in Boreal Forest Air at SMEAR II Station in Finland”', Anonymous Referee #3, 30 Nov 2017
- AC3: 'Responce to Referee 3', Marja Hemmilä, 31 Jan 2018

Peer-review completion

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

AR by Marja Hemmilä on behalf of the Authors (08 Feb 2018) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Referee Nomination & Report Request started (08 Feb 2018) by Armin Sorooshian

RR by Anonymous Referee #2 (02 Mar 2018)

Suggestions for revision or reasons for rejection

The Authors have made significant revisions to their manuscript and greatly strengthened its contribution to our understanding of atmospheric amines. In particular, the added information regarding the use of internal standards significantly improves confidence in the quantitative capabilities of MARGA-MS despite the frequently lost measurements due to instrumental technical issues. There are only a few technical changes that should be made the manuscript prior to publication in ACP.

Lines 38-39: Ammonia is converted to nitrate by soil microbes, giving it an overall acidifying effect on ecosystems when deposited. I am not aware of any work demonstrating that amines do not also have a net acidifying effect. Recommend addition of a reference here or removing this sentence.

Lines 152-153: The measurements are well below the calibration range for the alkyl amines and the authors have not been transparent about this in their discussion. It is easily appreciated that the calibrations were performed in the field at expected levels. Addition of this fact in the discussion would improve the scientific integrity of this work.

Lines 158-159: It is more clear to state 'were measured at least every other month with MARGAs blank-mode'

Lines 213-214: Remove the last sentence here. Claiming the most total measurements undermines the value of this body of work where it explores relationships between the amines and environmental parameters, which is much more impactful. These points are a consequence of the large number of measurements and far more important to highlight as a scientific contribution.

Line 230: Move this entire section and Figure 1 to the SI

Line 270/Figure 2: The y-axis labels have not been typeset properly and neither have some of the labels. Recommend careful review of all table and figure formatting as there are a number of similar issues throughout the manuscript.

Line 504/Figure 10: This is not referenced in the manuscript and should be, or else it should be moved to the SI or removed altogether.

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ED: Publish subject to minor revisions (review by editor) (10 Mar 2018) by Armin Sorooshian

AR by Marja Hemmilä on behalf of the Authors (19 Mar 2018) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Publish as is (20 Mar 2018) by Armin Sorooshian

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Short summary

We measured gas- and particle-phase amine and ammonia concentrations in a boreal forest site in 2015 with online ion chromatography coupled with mass spectrometry. We wanted to know how much and which kinds of amines there are, and how they behave and could affect nucleation. We observed seasonal and diurnal variations for different amines. Amines turned out to be a heterogeneous group of compounds. To our best knowledge, our amine measurements are the longest time series that has been made.