The manuscript has been improved and almost all the parts that needed a revision have been modified/integrated following the reviewers’ comments and answering their questions.
The inclusion of a discussion concerning the feedback on atmospheric composition completed the work considering the general focus on coupled atmospheric modelling.
The manuscript can be published after the minor revision required to clarify few items highlighted by the following detailed comments.
Detailed comments
The Authors should consider to include in their discussion (either in section 2.3 or in the conclusions section) the possible improvement that could be obtained from an high resolution local emission inventory. Previous studies (e.g. Denier van der Gon et al., 2011) showed that the use of continental scale emission inventories for city scale modelling can be quite crude for large European cities.
Denier van der Gon et al., 2011, Discrepancies between top-down and bottom-up emission inventories of megacities: the causes and relevance for modeling concentrations and exposure, Air Pollution Modeling and its Application XXI, 199-204, Springer, Dordrecht
2.2 Model framework and setup
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Does “uniform (in space) and constant (in time) initial conditions” mean “uniform (in space) initial and boundary conditions and constant (in time) boundary conditions”?
The detail provided in Table 1 for initial and boundary conditions does not help much to understand the chosen approach. Which is the origin of the values indicated in Table 1? Minimum values, winter typical values? Do they come from measurements? Values in Table 1 are for the surface layer. Do you assume any form of vertical profile? Are the mentioned aerosol species the only ones considered for pm2.5 and pm10 IC and BC?
2.3 Modifications of the aerosol emissions
Figure 2 is hardly understandable. The color shaded areas are not well defined. A “pixel-style” plot would be more readable. The isopleths and their labels are substantially unreadable. It is not a matter of picture quality or graphic resolution, the way the picture is built can definitely be improved.
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Does the sentence “due to the switch from residential heating from fossil fuels to wood burning” stay for “due to the switch of residential heating from fossil fuels to wood burning”?
3.1.1 Aerosol model performance under smog influence
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Wrong open bracket.
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I do not understand the meaning of the sentence “i.e. for the half PM1OA and for all PM1BC the daytime peaks occurred during the intense smog period.”. What does “the half of PM1 OA and of all PM1 BC” mean?
3.2 Impact of RWB smog on radiation
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The Authors say: “This slight increase in the concentration of aerosol species due to the aerosol-radiation interaction, is associated with an almost 10 m lower mean PBL height in case 4 compared to case 2, in accordance to the respective findings in Forkel et al. (2012).”
If case 4 has lower PBL height than case 2, I would expect to find higher concentrations for case 4 that for case 2, having to deal with near surface emissions. While you said that (case 2 – case 4) give positive results. What is the effective PBL height effect? |