Five Years (2014–2018) of Beta Activity Concentration and the Impact of Synoptic and Local Meteorological Conditions in Bilbao (Northern Spain)

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Most of the comments were stressed in the revised manuscript, however, the following two issues are still important and should be discussed or supplemented.

 

1. In Methods:

“Trend represents the evolution of the series in a long period of time and needs 177

values of years. So, in this case, the analysis is not relevant because only 5 years 178

cannot explain the future evolution.”---This is statement is incorrect. Actually, trend only represents the long-term trend of time-series, irrelevant to the unit of the time series. You should put the plots of trend, seasonality, cyclic and residuals into supplementary file. This may shed light on real variations of beta activity concentration, while others are just due to residuals.

 

2. The authors should discuss strengths and limitations of this study in the Discussion. I did not see that. For example, whether there are other factors that may affect the variations of beta activity concentration or modify the associations between meteorological factors and beta activity concentration.

Author Response

thanks for your comments.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

The draft is highly improved and ready for publication.

Author Response

thanks for your comments

Reviewer 3 Report

The quality of the article has been significantly improved when the supplements and amendments were made to the article manuscript.

It is great that the authors have taken into account a part of observations and amended the article manuscript according to the comments. Some observations have not been addressed, however that authors provided a reasoned explanation which seems satisfactory to me.

In my opinion, the article may be published in the magazine Atmosphere after having improved the quality of a newly added Figure No. 4 (numbers on axes are blurred) and having revised the compliance of the references with the requirements of the magazine once again (e.g. reference No. 5 needs to be adjusted).

Author Response

thanks for your comments

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 3 Report

In my opinion, the article may be published in the magazine Atmosphere 

This manuscript is a resubmission of an earlier submission. The following is a list of the peer review reports and author responses from that submission.

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

This study aims to identify the variation of gross specific activities and the associations with meteorological parameters in the north of the Iberian Peninsula. The idea is clear and interesting, but there are several major concerns in statistical analyses and overall explanations.

 

 

Major comments

In abstract:

1. Aim and statistical methods of the study should be specified clearly.

 

2. “beta activity concentrations” or “beta concentrations” or “beta activity”? It would be better to consistent thorough the paper

 

In introduction

3. Since “Many studies have performed analysis on the relationship between meteorological conditions and the concentration of diverse radionuclides in air”, what is the innovation of this paper except for the geographical advantage?

 

4. In the last part of introduction, only aim of the study is necessary. Please delete the methods or other irreverent: “We have also used backward trajectories to identify the most relevant synoptic scenarios associated with anomalous gross beta activity concentrations. This work complements previous analysis carried out in this same area related to alpha emitters [14] and 7Be [15] measurements.”

 

In methods:

5. The hourly data were collected, why used weekly meteorological data? I suggest using a more accurate unit, such as daily data. Please revise or at least explain.

 

6. To have a better understanding of the variation, you need to decompose the time series into trend, seasonality, cyclic and residuals

 

7. Regarding the associations between meteorological factors and beta activity concentrations, a regression model would be more appropriate as compared to the simple correlation analysis.

 

 

In results

8. “Figure 3a presents time behaviour of weekly beta activity concentrations” should be “temporal distribution of weekly beta activity concentrations”

 

9. In Figure 3A, why the beta activity concentration peaked in 104^th week and in the end of 2008? You may explain in the main text.

 

10. The authors should show the plots of autocorrelation and partial correlation functions

 

11. Discussions are insufficient. Limitations should be listed clearly in the main text.

 

 

Minor comments:

12.  All the words should be checked to avoid mistakes in grammar. Such as:

In abstract: “to defined meteorological scenario” Should be “to define meteorological scenario”

Reviewer 2 Report

This manuscript analyzed Gross beta activity ambient concentrations in ground-level air in Bilbao (northern Spain) for five years (2014-2018) . The topic of gross beta activity in North Spain is relevant to the scope of Atmosphere. I would recommend this manuscript to be accepted.

Reviewer 3 Report

The article is interesting and relevant because the authors examine the impact of meteorological conditions on beta activity concentration in the study area located in northern Spain in different aspects. However, I would like to share some observations.

1. The article does not explain why the authors have chosen the particular period (2014-2018) for the analysis of the relationship between the gross beta active concentration and meteorological parameters. I understand that this work is an ongoing research of the authors, but it would be great to find some justification for why this particular period has been chosen for the analysis of the article.
2. The wind speed and wind direction distribution during the period of five years presented in Fig. 2 is not informative. I would suggest to present the distribution of wind speed and direction for each year separately, as the data on humidity, temperature and precipitation are presented.
3. The article presents a comparison of beta concentrations in different seasons of the year with the data of previous research carried out before 2014, however the paper does not contain the data of those previous years.
4. The experiment results described in Fig. 4 needs justification as to why the highest beta concentrations are reached each year in autumn and the lowest ones in winter during the entire study period.
5. The text should contain the definitions of <P10, P25-P10, etc.
6. The authors could expand the explanation of Fig. 6 regarding why the increase of beta activity concentrations was being observed in the study area until 2017, and then the concentrations started to decrease in 2018.
7. The wind speed graphs presented in Fig. 5 do not reflect the correlation between beta activity concentrations and wind speed described below the figure, but only reflect the wind speed distribution.
8. In the section of conclusions, the authors state that a weak correlation of beta activity concentrations with ambient temperature has been found, however the correlation coefficient found by the authors between these parameters indicated in line 239 is significantly higher than that between beta activity concentration and wind speed (line 263).
9. I would suggest not to refer to outdated literature sources in the article, at least those older than 20 years.

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf