From the journal Environmental Science: Atmospheres Peer review history

25-Sep-2023

Dear Dr Murphy:

Manuscript ID: EA-ART-07-2023-000112
TITLE: Carbon monoxide fluxes measured using the eddy covariance method from an intensively managed grassland in Ireland

Thank you for your submission to Environmental Science: Atmospheres, published by the Royal Society of Chemistry. I sent your manuscript to reviewers and I have now received their reports which are copied below.

After careful evaluation of your manuscript and the reviewers’ reports, I will be pleased to accept your manuscript for publication after revisions.

Please revise your manuscript to fully address the reviewers’ comments. When you submit your revised manuscript please include a point by point response to the reviewers’ comments and highlight the changes you have made. Full details of the files you need to submit are listed at the end of this email.

Please submit your revised manuscript as soon as possible using this link :

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The Royal Society of Chemistry requires all submitting authors to provide their ORCID iD when they submit a revised manuscript. This is quick and easy to do as part of the revised manuscript submission process. We will publish this information with the article, and you may choose to have your ORCID record updated automatically with details of the publication.

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Environmental Science: Atmospheres strongly encourages authors of research articles to include an ‘Author contributions’ section in their manuscript, for publication in the final article. This should appear immediately above the ‘Conflict of interest’ and ‘Acknowledgement’ sections. I strongly recommend you use CRediT (the Contributor Roles Taxonomy, https://credit.niso.org/) for standardised contribution descriptions. All authors should have agreed to their individual contributions ahead of submission and these should accurately reflect contributions to the work. Please refer to our general author guidelines https://www.rsc.org/journals-books-databases/author-and-reviewer-hub/authors-information/responsibilities/ for more information.

I look forward to receiving your revised manuscript.

Yours sincerely,
Prof. Nønne Prisle
Associate Editor, Environmental Sciences: Atmospheres

************

Reviewer 1

See attached file

Reviewer 2

Murphy and others measure CO fluxes using the eddy covariance technique in a grazed fiend in Ireland. The study is technically competent and adds critical detail to a globally undermeasured flux, but slight methodological improvements could lend confidence to the resuts.
Please briefly describe why there is ‘much disparity between previously reported results’
Do any countries have CO inventories? This could and should be generalized to other countries.

Regarding the pressure units of torr please use SI units.

The flux calculation method was in my opinion quite rigorous and double-rotation as applied is best to use in this case of vegetation height that can increase or decrease rather rapidly.

How were the anthropogenic Co flux values removed? A wind direction threshold or a footprint model?

Throughout there are minor typographic errors including spacing between numbers and units and ‘Carnsore point’, which should be capitalized. A brief read-through of the manuscript should be sufficient.

The analytical approach could probably be applied without normalizing fluxes, which can obscure the values of important fitted parameters. Also, why were variables binned for analysis? There seems to be missing opportunities to define response functions.

Were the nighttime fluxes filtered for turbulence (commonly envisioned as the “ustar threshold”?)

Heat maps may be a good option to make Figure 1 more demonstrable of the variability of the data.

For the comparisons wouldn’t a more reasonable one be January through October for each year with annual fluxes presented for 2019 only?

Regarding one of the major conclusions that CO efflux outweights uptake, can one be confident that the anthropogenic sources were fully removed? A footprint analysis or similar would help.

REVIEWER 1
Thank you for taking time to review our paper and your helpful comments which will improve the quality of this paper. We have addressed all the below comments and we hope these changes are satisfactory.

Carbon monoxide (CO) related atmospheric research is relatively rare even though CO is an important indirect greenhouse gas influencing Earth’s climate. Any new research, or measurement program is valuable for the scientific community. The topic fits into the scope of Environmental Science: Atmosphere. The authors present new data in a reasonably sized manuscript. The title reflects the content and contains relevant search terms for discoverability. The abstract is self-contained without reference to the main text. Considering the shortness of the data series, I would be a bit more cautious with the concluding statements. Some of them might need rephrasing. While the manuscript is suitable for publication in general, I suggest a minor revision addressing my comments below:
Comment: 1) Abstract, lines 7-8: It says that „...CO fluxes peak ... between 8 pm and midnight...”. However, the authors say in line 9 on page 16 that elevated CO fluxes were observed between 8 pm and 2 am. The two statements should be brought into line.
Response: Please see changes made to abstract lines 15-16
‘In both datasets, a diurnal pattern was observed where CO fluxes peaked between 8 am and 6 pm, and between 8 pm and 2 am during the colder months of the year’
Comment: 2) Introduction, para. 1, last sentence: The atmospheric lifetime of CO is relatively short and seasonally changing, however, it is not as short as two weeks according to my best knowledge. I have checked the paper cited but I could not find there any reasoning or further reference to this extra-short lifetime data. The radiative forcing index should be given for carbon monoxide.
Response: Please see changes made on Line 33-37 of the manuscript
“While CO has a relatively short lifetime (on average one to four months) (Masson-Delmotte et al., 2021) and a weak radiative forcing of 0.234 W m-2 (Myhre et al., 2013), the total indirect radiative forcing at a global scale has been estimated to be greater than that of nitrous oxide (N2O), thus making CO an important gas species in forcing climate change(Myhre et al., 2013).”


Comment: 3) Page 9, line 2: ha1 -> ha-1
Response: Please see changes made on page 6 Line 127-128 of the amended manuscript
“40 kg CAN ha-1”
Comment: 4) Page 9, para. 1: In the temperate zone, traditionally, spring means March-May, summer is June-August, the autumn months are September, October, and November, while the winter season is December-February. Here you define spring as January- February-March, while in the title of Table 1, as February-March-April. Be consistent because it undermines the credibility of your statements. I suggest following the traditional convention.
Response: Please see changes made on Page 6 Lines 131-135 of the manuscript
“...with three events in the spring (February, March and April), four events in the summer (May, June and July) and three events in the autumn (August, September and October)”
Comment: 5) Page 10, last sentence: LGR QLC analysers usually maintain a cell temperature of around 43 degrees. Is 34 °C a misprint or your instrument’s measuring cell is set to 34 degrees indeed?
Response: The newer LGR QCL analysers are temperature stabilised at 45 °C, so they should always maintain a temperature around 45 °C . As for the older models such as the one used in this research, the internal temperature is not stabilised, and LGR instead state an operating temperature range of 5-45 °C under the official performance specifications both in the manual and on the technical data sheet. This means that ABB-LGR have tested and guaranteed that the instrument will meet the stated specifications for accuracy and precision, so long as it is operated within the operating temperature range specified. Since 34 C is within the stated operating temperature range of the QCL used in this study, LGR have stated that we can have confidence that the analyser will meet all stated performance specifications.
Comment: 6) Page 16, para. 1: The statement on the statistical significance is not quite clear. Is the relation between the fluxes and WFPS (or temperature) not significant at the given probability level?
Response: Fluxes were significantly different with WFPS, temperature and PPFD as defined by a p-value of less than 0.05. Lines 227 -228 have been changed to provide extra clarity on this
“Half-hourly CO fluxes were significantly different (as defined as a p-value < 0.05) with PPFD, air temperature and WFPS “
Comment: 7) Page 18, Table 1, title: see my comment 4)
Response: Text changes in response to comment 4 have been made to match the breakdown of seasons by month in Table 1 title.
Comment: 8) Page 18, Table 1, row 1: nnmol -> nmol
Response: Please see changes made to Table 1 row 1
“
Date Weather CO Flux (nmol m¯² s¯¹)
“
Comment: 9) Page 19, Fig. 1: In the text, you also refer to the precipitation amount. Table 1 also contains these data. Why do you not present the flux-precipitation relation in a figure as you do it with the other relations?
Response: The flux-precipitation relation has been included in figure 1. Please see changes made to Lines 282-285 of the amended manuscript
“Trends in CO fluxes and binned values of PPFD, air temperature, WFPS and rainfall showed that CO fluxes increased with increasing PPFD, but the response of measured CO fluxes to air temperature, WFPS and rainfall was more varied (Fig. 1).”
Comment: 10) Page 20-23, Fig. 2, 3 and 4, x-axis title: hrs-1 -> hrs (or h or local standard time, etc.)

Response: Fig 2, 3 and 4 x-axis have been changed from hrs-1 to hrs
Comment: 11) Page 21-23, Fig. 2 and 3, captions: see my comment 4)
Response: Amended according to guidance from comment 4
Comment: 12) Page 24, para. 2: You cannot say that the grassland shows a higher loss in 2019 than in 2020 because you measured the fluxes only until October 2020. The data in Table 1 show that the loss was high in November and December 2019, consequently it can be easily imagined that the total loss would have been higher in 2020 than in 2019 if you had continued the measurements in November-December 2020.
Response: A row including re-calculated CO fluxes measured in 2019 over the same timeframe as 2020 (January – October) have been included, as well as description of those results in Lines 399 – 404 of the amended manuscript
“ For comparability with the same timeframe as 2020 CO flux measurements, the net cumulative CO fluxes, total cumulative CO fluxes were recalculated excluding CO measurements from November and December. Re-calculated net cumulative CO fluxes were lower relative to 2020 but the system remained a source of CO at a rate of 8.1 ±14.2 mg CO-C m-2 month-1.“
See Section 4.2 lines 482 -491 of the amended manuscript including a discussion of the re-calculated CO fluxes measured in 2020
“When comparing net cumulative CO fluxes over the same time period (January – October), 2020 had higher total CO fluxes relative to 2019 in both the COBroad and COFilter dataset. This was due to an overall higher net emission relative to net uptake in 2020, namely during January, February and March. This period was wetter in 2020 (61.8 – 63.5 % WFPS) compared to 2019 (53.1 – 61.3 % WFPS), thus favouring greater anaerobic conditions which reduce the potential for CO consumption by soil microbes. Similar findings have been reported for soil derived methane (CH4) emissions from agricultural soils, where the presence of a high soil moisture content (> 80 % VWC) hinders the microbial consumption of CH4 by creating anaerobic soil conditions (Cowan et al., 2021).

Comment: 13) Page 24, para. 2, last sentence: I would move this sentence to the beginning of the next paragraph to keep statements together, that are closely related.
Response: Please see changes made to Lines 499-502 on the manuscript.
“What is interesting however, is when anthropogenic sources of CO surrounding the field site are removed from the dataset, the grassland is still a source of CO although far lower than when contaminated CO fluxes are retained in the data (59 % lower in 2019 and 50 % lower in 2020). Globally grassland soils are considered a sink.....”

Comment: 14) Page 24, last paragraph: The right unit is mg CO-C m-2 month-1, I guess. Not mg CO-C m-2 yr-1.
Response: The units have been changed from mg CO-C m2 yr to mg CO-C m2 month through the manuscript
Comment: 15) Page 24, last line: I would compose the sentence more cautiously. In fact, the sink in May is only 0.1 mg CO-C m-2 month-1, which can hardly deviate from zero in a statistical sense considering the high scatter of the data.
Response: Please see changes to Lines 476 – 498 of the amended manuscript, where a more appropriate description of the net monthly cumulative CO-C emissions is outlined

“ In both experimental years and treatments, the grassland was a net source of CO, where higher cumulative CO emissions were consistently measured in the COBroad datasets compared to the COFilter datasets, and a higher net cumulative flux was measured in 2019 compared to 2020. However, it is important to note that the 2020 dataset was shorter (January – October) compared to the 2019 dataset (January – December) which ultimately contributes to why cumulative CO fluxes reported in this study are lower in 2020 compared to 2019. When comparing net cumulative CO fluxes over the same time period (January – October), 2020 had higher total CO fluxes relative to 2019 in both the COBroad and COFilter dataset. This was due to an overall higher net emission relative to net uptake in 2020, namely during January, February and March. This period was wetter in 2020 (61.8 – 63.5 % WFPS) compared to 2019 (53.1 – 61.3 % WFPS), thus favouring greater anaerobic conditions which reduce the potential for CO consumption by soil microbes. Similar findings have been reported for soil derived methane (CH4) emissions from agricultural soils, where the presence of a high soil moisture content (> 80 % VWC) hinders the microbial consumption of CH4 by creating anaerobic soil conditions (Cowan et al., 2021). The highest rates of monthly net uptake of CO were measured in 2019, namely in August (-6.1 ± 2.8 mg CO- C m¯² month⁻¹) and September (-10.1 ± 2.4 mg CO- C m¯² month⁻¹). Higher net uptake during these months is likely due to the presence of favourable conditions for CO consumption by microbial communities such as high temperatures (13.8 - 15.8 oC) and adequate soil moisture (46.5 - 56%) and rainfall (32.7 – 122.2 mm), in combination with possible CO deposition from adjacent sources for example, car exhausts from the main road located < 150 meters from the field site as well as from farm machinery exhausts. “

Comment: 16) Page 32, Table S2: There are several references to this table in the text. I would put it into the main text, not into the supplement.
Response: Table S2 is now Table 2 in the main body of the manuscript and can be found immediately following Figure 5 in Section 3.2.









REVIEWER 2:
Thank you for your constructive criticism and comments which have overall helped to improve the manuscript. We hope the corrections applied to the manuscript are satisfactory.

Murphy and others measure CO fluxes using the eddy covariance technique in a grazed fiend in Ireland. The study is technically competent and adds critical detail to a globally under measured flux, but slight methodological improvements could lend confidence to the results.
Comment: Please briefly describe why there is ‘much disparity between previously reported results’
Response: Please see changes to the amended manuscript on Lines 86 – 94

“Nonetheless, there is still a lack of available long term data on CO flux dynamics from agricultural soils (Bruhn et al., 2013, King and Crosby, 2002, Lee et al., 2012, Moxley and Smith, 1998, Moxley and Cape, 1997). Previously studies have reported contrasting findings in the role of agricultural soils as a source or sink of CO. For example, Cowan et al. (2018)showed that a grazed grassland in Scotland was a net source of CO ranging between 0.35 and 0.8 g C m-2 yr-1, Sanhueza et al. (1994) reported that a grassland in Venezuela transitioned from a net source of CO to a net sink following ploughing, and Liu et al. (2018) found that globally, short and tall grasslands were a net sink of CO at a rate of 0.27 and 0.65 Tg CO yr-1.”

Comment: Do any countries have CO inventories? This could and should be generalized to other countries.
Response: Ireland includes CO in its national inventory from energy industries, principally from fuel combustion, but does not include CO emissions from agricultural soils. The same is also true of the UK inventory. See changes made to the amended manuscript on Lines 97-102
“However, the national GHG inventory in Ireland does not account for CO emissions from agricultural soils, thus leaving a considerable knowledge gap in terms of how agricultural landscapes and land-use change can influence the uptake and release of CO. Previous assessments of CO emissions from grassland soils in the UK, estimated that national annual emissions could range between 54.3 and 69.5 Gg CO or 3.4 – 4.3 % of the 2018 GHG inventory total (Cowan et al., 2018)“

Comment: Regarding the pressure units of torr please use SI units.
Response: When using these instruments (Made in USA), Torr is the only available pressure setting. For users of this equipment and other similar closed path analysers (most of which are from the USA) torr is the most common unit.

Line 156 “85 torr (11.3 kPa)” added for comparison

Comment: The flux calculation method was in my opinion quite rigorous and double-rotation as applied is best to use in this case of vegetation height that can increase or decrease rather rapidly.
Response: Thank you for the comment.
Comment: How were the anthropogenic Co flux values removed? A wind direction threshold or a footprint model?
Response: Lines 198 – 209 describe the methodological approach taken to removing anthropogenic CO fluxes (referred to as COFilter fluxes in the manuscript)
“ For COFilter fluxes the above filtering protocol was applied and additionally, CO flux values measured from potential anthropogenic sources were also removed. This included removing CO fluxes measured from the North-West and North-East as the main road and lanes within the farm were located in this wind direction (Fig. S1). Furthermore, CO fluxes deemed to be related to vehicle exhaust emissions from rush hour traffic on the main road and from farm machinery were removed. This involved removing half-hourly CO fluxes where the measured CO concentration for that period was greater than the daily mean CO concentration. This method was chosen as opposed to removing CO fluxes over rush-hour traffic times, in order to retain flux values that were representative of the natural production of CO through photodegradation which otherwise would have been omitted for example, midday CO fluxes. Following this additional filtering step, 13 % of total measured CO fluxes were retained “
The flux footprint of the tower has also been included to Fig S1. Please see response to the final comment for a description of flux footprint and omitting CO fluxes from anthropogenic sources.
Comment: Throughout there are minor typographic errors including spacing between numbers and units and ‘Carnsore point’,which should be capitalized. A brief read-through of the manuscript should be sufficient.
Response: The manuscript has been proof read to address these typographic errors.
Comment: The analytical approach could probably be applied without normalizing fluxes, which can obscure the values of important fitted parameters. Also, why were variables binned for analysis? There seems to be missing opportunities to define response functions.
Response: Due to the high degree of scatter in flux measurements (potentially due to some advection and being close to the detection limits of the system), it becomes difficult to show driving interactions between environmental variables and CO flux. Binned analysis is one way in which the data can be analysed more generally without scatter to observe trends
Comment: Were the night-time fluxes filtered for turbulence (commonly envisioned as the “ustar threshold”?)
Response: A uniform ustar threshold was applied for both daytime and night-time fluxes (0.1 m-2 s-1). Applying a standard ustar threshold for both daytime and night-time fluxes is not uncommon practice when using the eddy covariance technique to measure CO and other gases, for example Cowan et al. (2018) (Merbold et al., 2014), Wecking et al. (2020)

Comment: Heat maps may be a good option to make Figure 1 more demonstrable of the variability of the data.
Response:
As mentioned in response to comment 7, the scatter in data makes it difficult to see trends in the heat map format (not enough of a gradient). While the GAM method is able to deploy a cubic splines method to better predict fluxes given the combined environmental data and time, the direct relationships with each variable are weak and heat maps do not show uncertainty. We would like to keep Figure 1 in its current format
Comment: For the comparisons wouldn’t a more reasonable one be January through October for each year with annual fluxes presented for 2019 only?
Response: A row including re-calculated CO fluxes measured in 2019 over the same timeframe as 2020 (January – October) have been included in Table 2, as well as description of those results in Lines 399 – 403 of the amended manuscript
“ For comparability with the same timeframe as 2020 CO flux measurements, total cumulative CO fluxes were recalculated excluding CO measurements from November and December. Re-calculated net cumulative CO fluxes were lower relative to 2020 but the system remained a source of CO at a rate of 8.1 ±14.2 mg CO-C m-2 month-1.”

See Section 4.2 lines 481 -490 of the amended manuscript including a discussion of the re-calculated CO fluxes measured in 2020
“When comparing net cumulative CO fluxes over the same time period (January – October), 2020 had higher total CO fluxes relative to 2019 in both the COBroad and COFilter dataset. This was due to an overall higher net emission relative to net uptake in 2020, namely during January, February and March. This period was wetter in 2020 (61.8 – 63.5 % WFPS) compared to 2019 (53.1 – 61.3 % WFPS), thus favouring greater anaerobic conditions which reduce the potential for CO consumption by soil microbes. Similar findings have been reported for soil derived methane (CH4) emissions from agricultural soils, where the presence of a high soil moisture content (> 80 % VWC) hinders the microbial consumption of CH4 by creating anaerobic soil conditions (Cowan et al., 2021). “
Comment: Regarding one of the major conclusions that CO efflux outweighs uptake, can one be confident that the anthropogenic sources were fully removed? A footprint analysis or similar would help.
Response: The flux footprint of the EC tower has been included as part of Figure S1 and the legend has been modified accordingly. In the quality control procedure, flux values were retained within the dataset if at least 70% of the flux contribution came from inside of the boundaries of the field site. From the footprint image, this exclusively omits CO flux values outside of the field site (paddocks 10 and 11) which includes anthropogenic sources from the nearby main road in the N and the pathways within the farm NE of the field site.
“Figure S1.... (b) The flux footprint of the EC tower calculated using the footprint model outlined in Kljun et al. (2015). The footprint contour lines represent 10–90% of the flux source in 10% increments. The axis represents distance (metres) from the EC tower (black cross).”
Please see changes made to Lines 516 – 518 in the conclusion, stating that identified anthropogenic sources were removed
“Our study shows that without filtering out identified anthropogenic sources of CO, soil derived annual CO emissions from this grassland system would have been overestimated by 50 – 59 %.”
REFERENCES:
BRUHN, D., ALBERT, K. R., MIKKELSEN, T. N. & AMBUS, P. 2013. UV-induced carbon monoxide emission from living vegetation. Biogeosciences, 10, 7877-7882.
COWAN, N., HELFTER, C., LANGFORD, B., COYLE, M., LEVY, P., MOXLEY, J., SIMMONS, I., LEESON, S., NEMITZ, E. & SKIBA, U. 2018. Seasonal fluxes of carbon monoxide from an intensively grazed grassland in Scotland. Atmospheric Environment, 194, 170-178.
COWAN, N., MAIRE, J., KROL, D., CLOY, J. M., HARGREAVES, P., MURPHY, R., CARSWELL, A., JONES, S. K., HINTON, N. & ANDERSON, M. 2021. Agricultural soils: A sink or source of methane across the British Isles? European Journal of Soil Science, 72, 1842-1862.
KING, G. M. & CROSBY, H. 2002. Impacts of plant roots on soil CO cycling and soil–atmosphere CO exchange. Global Change Biology, 8, 1085-1093.
LEE, H., RAHN, T. & THROOP, H. 2012. An accounting of C‐based trace gas release during abiotic plant litter degradation. Global Change Biology, 18, 1185-1195.
LIU, L., ZHUANG, Q., ZHU, Q., LIU, S., VAN ASPEREN, H. & PIHLATIE, M. 2018. Global soil consumption of atmospheric carbon monoxide: an analysis using a process-based biogeochemistry model. Atmos. Chem. Phys., 18, 7913-7931.
MASSON-DELMOTTE, V., ZHAI, P., PIRANI, A., CONNORS, S. L., PÉAN, C., BERGER, S., CAUD, N., CHEN, Y., GOLDFARB, L. & GOMIS, M. 2021. Climate change 2021: the physical science basis. Contribution of working group I to the sixth assessment report of the intergovernmental panel on climate change, 2.
MERBOLD, L., EUGSTER, W., STIEGER, J., ZAHNISER, M., NELSON, D. & BUCHMANN, N. 2014. Greenhouse gas budget (CO 2, CH 4 and N2O) of intensively managed grassland following restoration. Global change biology, 20, 1913-1928.
MOXLEY, J. & CAPE, J. 1997. Depletion of carbon monoxide from the nocturnal boundary layer. Atmospheric environment, 31, 1147-1155.
MOXLEY, J. & SMITH, K. 1998. Factors affecting utilisation of atmospheric CO by soils. Soil Biology and Biochemistry, 30, 65-79.
MYHRE, G., SHINDELL, D., BRÉON, F., COLLINS, W., FUGLESTVEDT, J., HUANG, J., KOCH, D., LAMARQUE, J., LEE, D. & MENDOZA, B. 2013. A. Robock, G. Stephens, T. Takemura and H. Zhang,. Anthropogenic and Natural Radiative Forcing. Climate Change.
SANHUEZA, E., DONOSO, L., SCHARFFE, D. & CRUTZEN, P. J. 1994. Carbon monoxide fluxes from natural, managed, or cultivated savannah grasslands. Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres, 99, 16421-16427.
WECKING, A. R., WALL, A. M., LIÁNG, L. L., LINDSEY, S. B., LUO, J., CAMPBELL, D. I. & SCHIPPER, L. A. 2020. Reconciling annual nitrous oxide emissions of an intensively grazed dairy pasture determined by eddy covariance and emission factors. Agriculture, Ecosystems & Environment, 287, 106646.

01-Nov-2023

Dear Dr Murphy:

Manuscript ID: EA-ART-07-2023-000112.R1
TITLE: Carbon monoxide fluxes measured using the eddy covariance method from an intensively managed grassland in Ireland

Thank you for your submission to Environmental Science: Atmospheres, published by the Royal Society of Chemistry. I sent your manuscript to reviewers and I have now received their reports which are copied below.

After careful evaluation of your manuscript and the reviewers’ reports, I will be pleased to accept your manuscript for publication after revisions.

Please revise your manuscript to fully address the reviewers’ comments. When you submit your revised manuscript please include a point by point response to the reviewers’ comments and highlight the changes you have made. Full details of the files you need to submit are listed at the end of this email.

Please submit your revised manuscript as soon as possible using this link :

*** PLEASE NOTE: This is a two-step process. After clicking on the link, you will be directed to a webpage to confirm. ***

https://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/esatmos?link_removed

(This link goes straight to your account, without the need to log in to the system. For your account security you should not share this link with others.)

Alternatively, you can login to your account (https://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/esatmos) where you will need your case-sensitive USER ID and password.

You should submit your revised manuscript as soon as possible; please note you will receive a series of automatic reminders. If your revisions will take a significant length of time, please contact me. If I do not hear from you, I may withdraw your manuscript from consideration and you will have to resubmit. Any resubmission will receive a new submission date.

The Royal Society of Chemistry requires all submitting authors to provide their ORCID iD when they submit a revised manuscript. This is quick and easy to do as part of the revised manuscript submission process. We will publish this information with the article, and you may choose to have your ORCID record updated automatically with details of the publication.

Please also encourage your co-authors to sign up for their own ORCID account and associate it with their account on our manuscript submission system. For further information see: https://www.rsc.org/journals-books-databases/journal-authors-reviewers/processes-policies/#attribution-id

Environmental Science: Atmospheres strongly encourages authors of research articles to include an ‘Author contributions’ section in their manuscript, for publication in the final article. This should appear immediately above the ‘Conflict of interest’ and ‘Acknowledgement’ sections. I strongly recommend you use CRediT (the Contributor Roles Taxonomy, https://credit.niso.org/) for standardised contribution descriptions. All authors should have agreed to their individual contributions ahead of submission and these should accurately reflect contributions to the work. Please refer to our general author guidelines https://www.rsc.org/journals-books-databases/author-and-reviewer-hub/authors-information/responsibilities/ for more information.

I look forward to receiving your revised manuscript.

Yours sincerely,
Prof. Nønne Prisle
Associate Editor, Environmental Sciences: Atmospheres

************

Reviewer 1

The title of the x-axis of Figure S2 should be corrected: hrs^-1 -> hrs

Reviewer 1
Thank you for identifying the mistake on the x-axis of Figure S2 that we failed to address during the revisions. We hope the changes outlined below are satisfactory.

Comment: The title of the x-axis of Figure S2 should be corrected: hrs^-1 -> hrs
Response: Please see changes made to Figure S2 x-axis

06-Nov-2023

Dear Dr Murphy:

Manuscript ID: EA-ART-07-2023-000112.R2
TITLE: Carbon monoxide fluxes measured using the eddy covariance method from an intensively managed grassland in Ireland

Thank you for submitting your revised manuscript to Environmental Science: Atmospheres. I am pleased to accept your manuscript for publication in its current form. I have copied any final comments from the reviewer(s) below.

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