Interactive comment on “ Gasoline aromatic : a critical determinant of urban secondary organic aerosol formation ” by Jianfei
The authors presented the contribution of gasoline vehicle exhaust to SOA formation in urban atmosphere. The manuscript indicated the importance of the vehicular gasoline compositions and clarified the principal problem of vehicular emissions for haze pollution in China. However, in your literature review, the authors missed some new findings. E. g. Tang et al. (2015) illustrated the differences of gasoline compositions between China and USA and found alkenes and aromatics in China were 4.9% and 9.6% higher than that in USA, respectively. After a while, they also found mortality was correlated with vehicular emissions in Beijing (Tang et al., 2017). Therefore, I suggest the authors discuss these new findings on the chemical compositions of gasoline and the relationship between vehicular emissions and human health, which can emphasize the motivation of this study. C1
Organic composition of gasoline and its potential effects on air pollution in North China
When gasoline is burned to power an automotive engine, a portion of the fuel remains unburned or is partially burned and leaves the engine as hydrocarbon and oxygenated compounds. In addition, a small portion of the fuel can escape the vehicle through evaporation. Changes in alkanes, olefins and aromatics each affect emissions differently, which could complicate control strategies for air pollution. In this study, we collected 31 gasoline samples over five provinces and cities (Beijing, Tianjin, Hebei, Shandong, and Shaanxi) in North China between 2012 and 2013. The organic composition of the gasoline samples was analyzed using the gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS) method, and the aniline compounds were analyzed by solvent extraction and the GC-MS method. The ratios of alkanes, aromatics, olefins and other organic compounds in gasoline were 40.6%, 38.1%, 12.9% and 8.4%, respectively. The aromatic and benzene exceedances were 15 and 8 based on the China’s gasoline standards (III), and they accounted for 48.4% and 25.8% of all the gasoline samples, respectively. Strong carcinogen aniline compounds were detected in all 31 samples, and the content of aniline compounds in 3 samples exceeded 1%. The high proportion of aromatics and olefins in the gasoline increased the emissions of carbon monoxide (CO) and toxics, as well as the atmospheric photochemical reactivity of exhaust emissions, which could hasten the formation of secondary pollutants. Our results are helpful for redefining government strategies to control air pollution in North China and relevant for developing new refining technology throughout China.
Impacts of climate and land use changes on flood risk management for the Schijn River, Belgium
Abstract Flooding is the most common natural disaster in Europe. Modern flood risk management relies not only infrastructure development but also on governmental and non-governmental actors applying legal, economic and communicative water management instruments. Within the European Union (EU), flood management closely relies on policy set at the EU and national levels. It is now recognized that a sound understanding of climate change is required in addition to current management by taking into account land use change and socio-political context, as climate and land use changes have major impacts on hydrological responses. This paper investigates the hydrological behavior due to urbanization under current and future climate scenarios of high summer and high winter rainfall for 20 sub-catchments of the Schijn River, located in the Flanders region near Antwerp, Belgium. As urbanization increases and existing rainfall-runoff models neglecting the specific behavior of urban runoff, a hydrological model was developed based on a basic reservoir concept and applied to the existing rainfall-runoff model (PDM) flow to examine the specific urban contribution. Results revealed that peak flow for urban runoff and the total peak flow (i.e. rural and urban runoff) were significantly higher (i.e. ranges from 200% to 500%) than the existing rainfall-runoff model (PDM) flows, because of faster and more peaked urban runoff response. The impact of climate change on current and future conditions was also assessed by estimating peak flows with respect to return periods from the flood frequency curve. The predicted peak flow of high summer future climate scenario was significantly higher (i.e. ranges from 200% to 250%) than that of the current climatic condition for this region. Furthermore, hourly peak flow and daily volume ratios of 100-year return period for the highest, lowest and average impervious area were projected for the time horizon of the year 2100. It is concluded that climate change impacts contribute the most in producing peak flow in coming years, while increased urbanization takes the second place for both hourly and daily values. Results on urbanization effect and climate change impact assessment are useful to the water managers for spatial planning, emergency planning and insurance industry.