Seasonal contrast in size distributions and mixing state of black carbon and its association with PM<sub>1.0</sub> chemical composition from the eastern coast of India

Kompalli, Sobhan Kumar; Suresh Babu, Surendran Nair; Satheesh, Sreedharan Krishnakumari; Krishna Moorthy, Krishnaswamy; Das, Trupti; Boopathy, Ramasamy; Liu, Dantong; Darbyshire, Eoghan; Allan, James D.; Brooks, James; Flynn, Michael J.; Coe, Hugh

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-20-3965-2020

Articles | Volume 20, issue 6

https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-20-3965-2020

© Author(s) 2020. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Special issue:

Interactions between aerosols and the South West Asian...

https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-20-3965-2020

© Author(s) 2020. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 20, issue 6

Research article

|

02 Apr 2020

Research article |

| 02 Apr 2020

Seasonal contrast in size distributions and mixing state of black carbon and its association with PM_1.0 chemical composition from the eastern coast of India

Sobhan Kumar Kompalli, Surendran Nair Suresh Babu, Sreedharan Krishnakumari Satheesh, Krishnaswamy Krishna Moorthy, Trupti Das, Ramasamy Boopathy, Dantong Liu, Eoghan Darbyshire, James D. Allan, James Brooks, Michael J. Flynn, and Hugh Coe

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RC1: 'Comments on ‘Seasonal contrast in size distributions and mixing state of black carbon and its association with PM1.0 chemical composition from the eastern coast of India’ by Kompalli et al.', Anonymous Referee #1, 16 Jul 2019
- AC1: 'Interactive comment on "Seasonal contrast in size distributions and mixing state of black carbon and its association with PM1.0 chemical composition from the eastern coast of India"', Dr. Suresh Babu, 15 Dec 2019
RC2: 'Review of Seasonal contrast in size distributions and mixing state of black carbon and its association with PM1.0 chemical composition from the eastern coast of India by Sobhan Kumar Kompalli et al.', Anonymous Referee #2, 04 Nov 2019
- AC2: 'Interactive comment on "Seasonal contrast in size distributions and mixing state of black carbon and its association with PM1.0 chemical composition from the eastern coast of India"', Dr. Suresh Babu, 15 Dec 2019

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

AR by Anna Wenzel on behalf of the Authors (16 Jan 2020) Author's response

ED: Referee Nomination & Report Request started (16 Jan 2020) by Manvendra Krishna Dubey

RR by Anonymous Referee #2 (04 Feb 2020)

Suggestions for revision or reasons for rejection

The revised paper is significantly improved, but still needs work as there are still many typos, poor wording choices, and some repetitive discussion. I have two major comments about paper content and some minor comments. This is not an exhaustive list of minor comments -- there are many more small things that need correcting in the text. This paper would still benefit from careful editing by a native English speaker.

Major Comments:
1) I do not understand your distinction between the MMD and NMD data presented in Table 3 and in Table S1. If I understand correctly, the first is a fit to each individual 5 minute size distribution and then taking the average for the season. The second is averaging the size distributions for a season, and then fitting. These two approaches should give the same result. In your case, the results are only slightly different and well within the error bars in Table 3. These differences are not meaningful and you should not spend paragraphs in the supplementary rehashing exactly the same seasonal analysis as in the main text. In your author response, you state that the fit to the seasonal average is useful as an input to models, so that is all you need to say about it in the supplementary.

However, I’m curious why you do get slightly different values for the NMD and MMD with the two approaches. I wonder if it has something to do with the jog in the number size distribution at 50 nm from extrapolating the mass size distribution. You removed the data below 50 nm in Figure S2, but not in Figure 4a. In Figure 4a, you can see that the jog in the data pulls the log normal fit to smaller sizes. Did you redo the fits to the size distributions in Figure S2 after removing the extrapolation? Is there a reason that you kept the extrapolation (and corresponding jog in number size distribution) in Figure 4a? I wonder if you would get the same results for the two approaches if you removed the extrapolation from the data for both.

2) Please put the tables in the order that you discuss them in the text. Table 3 (with the results from this measurement campaign) should be Table 2 and should be referred to on page 9 in the paragraph starting with line 26 where these results are discussed. I would make a table out of the comparison with mass loading from other campaigns on page 10, lines7-17. It is very hard to interpret a string of numbers in the text. This should be Table 3. The current Table 2 (with the comparison of mode diameters to results from other campaigns) should be Table 4.

Minor comments:
1) Page 5, lines 16 and 27. The “high-resolution aerosol chemical composition measurements” on line 16 is referring to high mass resolving power in the case of Liu et al. 2014 and high time-resolution in the case of single particle SPAMS measurements in Gong et al., 2016. The ACSM has neither high mass resolving power nor particularly high time-resolution. Please do not use the same phrase to refer to ACSM measurements in line 27. In addition, it’s “non-refractory” not “non-refractive.”

2) page 6, lines 27-29. Phrase starting “In supplementary Figure S1…” and ending “…(PMS).” is not a complete sentence. Maybe combine it with the following sentence.

3) Page 7, lines 4-10. Please put the rainfall amounts in Table 1 in order to avoid a lot of numbers in the text. The last sentence of this paragraph is not necessary since the authors already pointed the reader to Table 1 earlier in the paragraph.

4) Page 9, line 6: Start a new paragraph when you change subjects from SP2 to ACSM.

5) Page 9, lines 26-27. How can a range of 0.31 to 0.26 give a mean of 1.23? Please include the correct numbers.

6) Page 12, line 19. Should be Figure 5, not Figure 6.

7) Page 18, line35. Liu et al. 2018 is not a reference for the SP-AMS.

8) Page 44, Table 2. Why do you have the results from Table S1 in this table? You should use the numbers from Table 3 – these are your results for this campaign.

9) Supplementary page 5. The M_0 units in Table S1 are ug/m3, but the numbers are actually ng/m3 according to the text. Please convert the numbers to ug/m3 in the text and the table.

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ED: Publish subject to minor revisions (review by editor) (06 Feb 2020) by Manvendra Krishna Dubey

AR by Dr. Suresh Babu on behalf of the Authors (15 Feb 2020) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Publish as is (18 Feb 2020) by Manvendra Krishna Dubey

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Seasonal contrast in size distributions and mixing state of black carbon and its association with PM1.0 chemical composition from the eastern coast of India

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Seasonal contrast in size distributions and mixing state of black carbon and its association with PM_1.0 chemical composition from the eastern coast of India