From the journal Environmental Science: Atmospheres Peer review history

08-Feb-2022

Dear Dr Mayer:

Manuscript ID: EA-ART-01-2022-000004
TITLE: An analysis of 30 years of surface ozone concentrations in Austria: temporal evolution, changes in precursor emissions and chemical regimes, temperature dependence, and lessons for the future

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.

I have carefully evaluated your manuscript and the reviewers’ reports, and the reports indicate that major revisions are necessary.

Please submit a revised manuscript which addresses all of the reviewers’ comments. Further peer review of your revised manuscript may be needed. 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.

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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 from CASRAI, https://casrai.org/credit/) 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 http://www.rsc.org/journals-books-databases/journal-authors-reviewers/author-responsibilities/ for more information.

I look forward to receiving your revised manuscript.

Yours sincerely,
Dr Tzung-May Fu
Associate Editor
Environmental Science: Atmospheres
Royal Society of Chemistry

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

Reviewer 1

The manuscript EA-ART-01-2022-000004 investigates evolution of surface ozone and its precursor level for 1990-2019 over Austria, and also analyzes the present-day ozone chemical formation regime and sensitivity to temperature. The topic is certainly important and merits publication in specialty journal. The long-term ozone data for about 30 years are valuable and the authors have presented an overall comprehensive analyses of the data. The organization of the study is somewhat unclear and the readers may feel hard to connect each part of the analyses to a clear story (see comment below). There are also some ambiguity of the analyses that should be clarified and re-examined. To conclude there is substantial room for this paper to be improved that would require moderate to major revision.

Major comments:
1. Structure of the paper. The paper presents the ozone trends, precursor level, chemical formation regime, and sensitivity to temperature. The former two parts cover 1990-2019, while the latter two parts are focusing on present-day level (2010-2019 or 2017-2019, Figures 4-7). While I understand the analyses of ozone chemical regime will be limited by the availability of HCHO observations, the current organization makes the paper be separated to two stories. The connection between the latter two parts and ozone trends should be clearly stated: have we seen a shift in the ozone chemical regime over 30-year period? Have we seen a shift of ozone-temperature sensitivity that may influence the trends?

2. Figure 1 shows a rather weak surface ozone trend over Austria from 1990. I wonder whether this is consistent with trends in other European sites, as summarized in the Tropospheric Ozone Assessment Report? I also recommend reporting trends in unit of xxx ppbv/year or ug m3/year so that trends over the Austria can be compared with other European sites.

3. The lines in Figure 5 are problematic. How does the slope of line be calculated? The dots are actually scattered in many cases and I am not convinced by the quantitative identification of chemical regime.

4. Figure 6 and Figure 7, the use of daily minimum temperature instead of maximum temperature is also confused. MDA8 ozone are mostly reflecting daytime ozone levels in particular for urban sites, shouldn’t maximum or daytime temperature more relevant?

5. Figure 7 is interesting, but using contour plot can be tricky. Could you please show the original dots for each site so it can be clear whether there is consistent pattern among sites?

Other comments
Line 92: My understanding is that NO is hard to be detected by normal monitoring instrument. Please check.


Line 131-132: It would be great to have a few words on the anthropogenic emission inventory, without going into the reference. Is it official, gridded inventory? Also it is not sure how BVOCs emissions are developed.

Typesetting correction:
Line 190: 2,8 should be 2.8.
Line 333: Should be Supp. Fig4

Reviewer 2

The study investigated changes in the observed surface ozone burden in the last 30 years in Austria on the basis of rural, suburban, and urban background sites. The temporal variations focused on the exceeding days of O3 level. This study also analyzed the potential drivers elevated ozone levels by using the available data. The underlying factors included temperature sensitivity, precursors emissions and various control areas of O3 production.
The manuscript needs to be revised carefully due to some confusing expressions and some of the explanations are a little rough. Besides, the full text should improve writing and reduce unnecessary mistakes.

Specific comments:
1. Line 162: Check the “mixing rations”.
2. Line 186: It is hard to observe the trend among the three site categories between 1990 and 2019 in Fig.2a. Please quantify the negative trend of the overall exceedances.
3. It is necessary to emphasize the reason for choosing “25 days” in Fig.2 of this study, although the authors have mentioned the concept or significance of “25 days” in the section of introduction.
4. Line 197: Check the “(figure 2e-e)”.
5. Lines 235-237: “For suburban and urban monitors, we find slight increases of the median values in the order of 2 – 5 g/m3”. It is necessary to illustrate which two episodes are compared. “This rise in the MDA8 O3 median values in suburban and urban areas in the last decade is driven by an asymmetric change at the tails of the distribution. The occurrence of low ozone values decreased stronger than those of high ozone values.” It is a little difficult to understand the first sentence at the first time. Maybe the second one try to explain or describe it, but don’t reflect well in the corresponding figure. Please add more explanation or references here to make the statement more convincing.
6. Lines 245-249: What is the basis of the indication for the first sentence? On the basis of JJA or MAM or JJA and MAM? Is there a causal relationship between the second sentence and the first one? If there is, please add more explanation about the increase of the median MDA8 O3 under the higher temperatures, lower precursors emissions and reduced titration mentioned in the sentences mentioned. Given the last sentence, the rise in 2000 – 2009 and fall in 2010 – 2019 focus on MAM not JJA?
7. In the section of 3.1, the MDA8 O3 analysis of seasonal variation is relative to less, although the authors said that they want to investigate the changes in the seasonal MDA8 O3. Add some explanations or descriptions.
8. In the section of 3.2, there is no analysis about the 3- and 5-year RLs. Are the results of 1-year RLs consistent with the 3- and 5-year results? What is the point that the extreme value analysis wants to explain?
9. The sentence in Line 310 “low-range NOx (DA NOx < 8 ppb) which is NOx limited, medium-range NOx (10 ppb < DA NOx < 40 ppb)”. So what is the meaning of DA NOx between 8 ppb and 10 ppb? Addition, how to determine the regime of VOCs-limited in Figure 5 (a)-(c) in spring and summer in this study? Is it under the condition that the ozone concentration does not change with NOx concentration? Why is only this time period of 2010 -2019 considered in the sections of 4.1 and 4.2?
10. Check the “BVCOs” in Line 329.
11. Are the descriptions of this Figure 6 (a)-(b) complete? Please add more illustrations to make “BVOCs to be the dominant VOC source in Austria” convincing.
12. Check the “figure S5” in Line 353.
13. Check the “One the one hand” in Line 399.
14. Check the “Rural 90” in Table S2.
15. In the section of introduction, the authors mentioned that anthropogenic NOx emission reductions were effective for O3 abatement and also BVOCs were the main urban VOC source in hot seasons. The urban condition is VOCs-limited according to the text, so does this conclusion of NOx emission reduction apply to the urban sites in Austria?

Dear Editor,
we are grateful for the thoughtful and helpful comments on our manuscript provided by two referees. Below we provide our point-by-point response marked with '* response:' to the original comments received. Changes made according to individual referee suggestions are further highlighted in the redline version of the manuscript enclosed. We also upload a pdf-file of our comments where additional figures are included.

Referee #1:
Major comments:
1. Structure of the paper. The paper presents the ozone trends, precursor level, chemical formation regime, and sensitivity to temperature. The former two parts cover 1990-2019, while the latter two parts are focusing on present-day level (2010-2019 or 2017-2019, Figures 4-7). While I understand the analyses of ozone chemical regime will be limited by the availability of HCHO observations, the current organization makes the paper be separated to two stories. The connection between the latter two parts and ozone trends should be clearly stated:

* response:
We thank the reviewer for this comment. To better combine the individual findings of our analysis. we have revised the conclusion section of our manuscript, as well as individual sections. Our response to the two questions raised by the referee is provided as point-to-point response below.

have we seen a shift in the ozone chemical regime over 30-year period?
* response:
For urban environments we identify VOC limitation over the study period, in analogy we identify NOx limitation for rural sites. That said, for suburban environments we identify over time a shift in the ozone chemical regime towards NOx limitation. See also the answer and updated illustrations in comment #3.

Have we seen a shift of ozone-temperature sensitivity that may influence the trends?
* response:
While we do not find a pronounced change in ozone-temperature sensitivity patterns for the individual site categories, we do find a decrease in the overall magnitude of the ozone-temperature sensitivity in spring and an increase in summer. This is particularly pronounced in spring were absolute values decreased from ranging between 1.9 and 2.8 mg/ (°C m3) in 1990-1999 to 0.8 and 1.4 mg/ (°C m3) in 2010-2019. Since ozone production is predominantly VOC limited in spring, the reduction of anthropogenic NMVOC emissions is seen in the decrease of the temperature sensitivity as we are moving to less efficient ozone production regimes.
As in spring temperature sensitivity patterns do not change during summer over time except for urban sites in 2000-2009, which can be related to altered NOx to VOC ratios during that time (i.e., much larger reduction in NMVOCs compared to NOx). In absolute terms the temperature sensitivity increased over time during summer by about 10% at urban sites.
To illustrate this information, we have included two additional supplemental figures (new figures S8 and S9) in the revised manuscript and include discussion of these figures in revised section 4.3.

2. Figure 1 shows a rather weak surface ozone trend over Austria from 1990. I wonder whether this is consistent with trends in other European sites, as summarized in the Tropospheric Ozone Assessment Report? I also recommend reporting trends in unit of xxx ppbv/year or ug m3/year so that trends over the Austria can be compared with other European sites.
* response:
In Figure 1 we do not show ozone concentrations, we show the annual average number of exceedances of the MDA8 O3 target value. Following the referees comment we have computed the urban and rural mean MDA8 O3 trend and compared these trends with findings of the TOAR activity in the revised manuscript. For summer (JJA) we find an increase at urban sites (our analysis 0.14ug m-3 y-1; TOAR data -0.05 ppb y-1) and a decrease of at rural sites (our analysis -0.12ug m-3 y-1; TOAR data -0.21 ppb y-1). We include the statement below in the revised manuscript: “Our results show, despite some difference in the precise time periods considered, a strong agreement with the results provided by Chang et al. (2017) for European sites contained in the tropospheric ozone assessment report (TOAR) database.”

3. The lines in Figure 5 are problematic. How does the slope of line be calculated? The dots are actually scattered in many cases and I am not convinced by the quantitative identification of chemical regime.
* response:
Following the referees comment we have updated the computation and visualization of these lines. In the revised manuscript we use a spline for the indication of chemical regimes. The spline is calculated as polynomial fit of 4th order to the envelopes of the scatterplots of MDA8 O3 and DA NOx. For the envelope fitting we bin the observations in 20 equally sized bins using data between the 10-% and 90-% quantile (to avoid introducing arbitrary effects by outliers) and fit to bin maxima. The revised version of figure 5 is provided below as is the new supplemental figure S4, which compares the splines for the three time periods to illustrate shifts and temporal evolution of the ambient chemical regimes.

4. Figure 6 and Figure 7, the use of daily minimum temperature instead of maximum temperature is also confused. MDA8 ozone are mostly reflecting daytime ozone levels in particular for urban sites, shouldn’t maximum or daytime temperature more relevant?
* response:
Our analysis of the 10-year time periods (2000-2009 and 2010-2019) with and without the hot summers / springs showed that temperature increases of about 2 °C relative to the climatological mean lead to significant lower ozone increases in spring than in summer. In spring we also find a distinct difference in the temperature sensitivity at urban versus rural sites (with urban sites about a factor of 3 larger). Taking that into account together with the temperature sensitivity of the gas phase rate constants Tmin was chosen in the original analysis. Following the referees comment we have repeated the analysis for a temperature metrics and find similar sensitivities. For the revised version we have adjusted the analysis to focus on the mean temperature. The rationale to use the mean instead of the daily maximum is that this temperature is better related to MDA8 ozone, which is computed over a large fraction (by definition 8 hrs) of the day. Below we provide the updated figure 6, the updated figure 7 is provided along with our response to referee comment #5 below.

5. Figure 7 is interesting, but using contour plot can be tricky. Could you please show the original dots for each site so it can be clear whether there is consistent pattern among sites?
* response:
We have updated figure 7 following the referee’s comment. Below we provide the updated figure and the figure version with original dots per site. We include this illustration in the revised manuscript as supplemental figure S6 as companion to figure 7.

Other comments
Line 92: My understanding is that NO is hard to be detected by normal monitoring instrument. Please check.
* response:
Indeed, NO is more complicated to measure. However, in Austria NO is legally required to be monitored, with dedicated quality assurance in place including annual calibration workshops offered by the Environment Agency Austria for the individual operators of the nine states responsible for the operation of the monitoring network. In addition, the Environment Agency Austria maintains a reference network at remote background sites with low pollutant concentrations (Umweltbundesamt 2020).

Line 131-132: It would be great to have a few words on the anthropogenic emission inventory, without going into the reference. Is it official, gridded inventory? Also it is not sure how BVOCs emissions are developed.
* response:
We provide additional information regarding the inventory in the revised manuscript: “Figure 1b provides an overview of the Austrian emission inventories for the national annual total anthropogenic emissions of NOx and NMVOCs over the last decades (Umweltbundesamt, 2021a). The grided data are available at the EMEP Centre on Emission Inventories and Projections (https://www.ceip.at/the-emep-grid/gridded-emissions). BVOC emissions are derived from various models such as Bauwens et al. (2018) for isoprene (http://emissions.aeronomie.be (BIRA IASB, 2018)) and Simpson and Winiwarter (1998) for other BVOCs.”

Typesetting correction:
Line 190: 2,8 should be 2.8.
Thank you for spotting this typo.
Line 333: Should be Supp. Fig4
Thank you for spotting this typo in line 315. It is in the revised manuscript figure S6.

References:
Chang K-L, Petropavlovskikh I, Cooper OR, Schultz MG, Wang T (2017): Regional trend analysis of surface ozone observations from monitoring networks in eastern North America, Europe and East Asia. Elem Sci Anth.; 5:50. DOI: 10.1525/elementa.243.
Umweltbundesamt (2020): Luftgütemessungen und meteorologische Messungen – Jahresbericht Hintergrundmessnetz Umweltbundesamt 2019, Spangl W., (Reports, Bd. REP-0714). https://www.umweltbundesamt.at/fileadmin/site/publikationen/rep0714.pdf

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Referee #2:
Specific comments:
1. Line 162: Check the “mixing rations”.
Thank you for spotting this typo.

2. Line 186: It is hard to observe the trend among the three site categories between 1990 and 2019 in Fig.2a. Please quantify the negative trend of the overall exceedances.
* response:
We have updated Figure 2a following the referee’s suggestion and provide the trend for the individual site categories now in the legend of this figure: urban monitors: + 0.04 days/y, suburban monitors: -0.16 days/y, rural monitors: -0.48 days/y

3. It is necessary to emphasize the reason for choosing “25 days” in Fig.2 of this study, although the authors have mentioned the concept or significance of “25 days” in the section of introduction.
* response:
We have included in the discussion of Figure 2a that it focuses on the exceedances of the MDA8 O3 target value for the protection of human health.

4. Line 197: Check the “(figure 2e-e)”.
Thank you for spotting this typo.

5. Lines 235-237: “For suburban and urban monitors, we find slight increases of the median values in the order of 2 – 5 ug/m3”. It is necessary to illustrate which two episodes are compared. “This rise in the MDA8 O3 median values in suburban and urban areas in the last decade is driven by an asymmetric change at the tails of the distribution. The occurrence of low ozone values decreased stronger than those of high ozone values.” It is a little difficult to understand the first sentence at the first time. Maybe the second one try to explain or describe it, but don’t reflect well in the corresponding figure. Please add more explanation or references here to make the statement more convincing.
* response:
We apologize for not being clear enough, the reported increase in the median is for the last decade (2010-2019) in comparison to the first (1990-1999). We have clarified this in the revised submission.
We have rephrased the statement regarding changes in the MDA8 O3 median, which reads in revised form: “This rise in the MDA8 O3 median values in suburban and urban areas in the last decade is driven largely by increases in the lower tail of the MDA8 O3 distribution, while changes in the upper tail are less pronounced (see figure S2 in the supplement for the evolution of the MDA8 O3 concentrations for MAM and JJA).”

6. Lines 245-249: What is the basis of the indication for the first sentence? On the basis of JJA or MAM or JJA and MAM? Is there a causal relationship between the second sentence and the first one? If there is, please add more explanation about the increase of the median MDA8 O3 under the higher temperatures, lower precursors emissions and reduced titration mentioned in the sentences mentioned. Given the last sentence, the rise in 2000 – 2009 and fall in 2010 – 2019 focus on MAM not JJA?
* response:
We apologize for not being clear enough in this section. Focus is given on the effect of the hot summers on MDA8 O3. We have adjusted the section accordingly. “We find due to the hot summers an increase of the median MDA8 O3 of about 2 ug/m3 in 2000 – 2009 and about 6 ug/m3 in 2010 – 2019 because of the enhanced ozone productivity at elevated temperatures. In spring the temperature effect is much smaller, 0 – 1 ug/m3in 2000 – 2009 and 1 – 3 ug/m3 in 2010 – 2019 despite spring temperatures in 2003, 2015, 2017, 2018 being well above the climatological mean of 1981-2010 (2003: +1.5 °C, 2015: +1.5 °C, 2017: +2.4 °C, 2018: +2.7 °C, 2019: +0.4 °C (Stangl et al., 2020)). Elevated springtime temperatures affect peak ozone to a much smaller extent than during summer season because the absolute temperature range is too low for efficient ozone production. A detailed temperature sensitivity analysis of MDA8 O3 is presented in section 4.3.”

7. In the section of 3.1, the MDA8 O3 analysis of seasonal variation is relative to less, although the authors said that they want to investigate the changes in the seasonal MDA8 O3. Add some explanations or descriptions.
* response:
Given the seasonal cycle of ozone abundances and the frequency of exceedances days of the air quality threshold value we focus our analysis on summer and spring. We have specified this now for clarity also right at the beginning of the paper (section 2.1) “We analyze for each monitor category 1) the number of days exceeding the 120 ug/m3 EU threshold for MDA8 O3 on annual basis and for the warm seasons (JJA and MAM) of the year which show peak ozone abundance; and 2) the spring- and summertime probabilistic 1-, 3-, and 5-year return level (RL) of MDA8 O3.”

8. In the section of 3.2, there is no analysis about the 3- and 5-year RLs. Are the results of 1-year RLs consistent with the 3- and 5-year results? What is the point that the extreme value analysis wants to explain?
* response:
We have revised this section corresponding to the referee’s comment to better motivate the aim of the return level analyses and changes at higher order RLs.
“… The RLs correspond to the MDA8 O3 value exceeded at least once in 1, 3 or 5 years respectively and thus illustrates the changes in peak ozone abundances. In figure 3 boxplots of the estimated summertime MDA8 O3 RLs for urban, suburban, and rural sites are shown for 2000 – 2009 and 2010 – 2019. The median RLs are generally highest in rural areas, while suburban sites show the largest spread in site level RLs. To estimate the impact of heat waves on MDA8 O3 RLs, we analyze and contrast MDA8 O3 RLs for 2000 – 2009 and 2010 – 2019 including/excluding the years with hot summers (2003, 2015, 2017, 2018, 2019). In figure 3 the orange boxplots indicate the analysis without the extreme years with generally smaller MDA8 O3 RLs. The 1-year RLs are lowered on average ~ 4 ug/m3 in 2000 – 2009 and ~ 6ug/m3 in 2010 – 2019 when excluding hot years, which illustrates the temperature penalty on O3 during hot summers. The median 1-year RLs of the decadal time slices decreased by ~ 4 ug/m3 at urban, ~ 2 ug/m3 at suburban and ~ 11 ug/m3 at rural sites in 2010 – 2019 compared to 2000 – 2009. For higher order return levels decreases particularly at rural and suburban sites are even more pronounced yielding up ~ 6 ug/m3 for 3-year RLs and ~ 14 ug/m3 for 5-year RLs.”

9. The sentence in Line 310 “low-range NOx (DA NOx < 8 ppb) which is NOx limited, medium-range NOx (10 ppb < DA NOx < 40 ppb)”. So what is the meaning of DA NOx between 8 ppb and 10 ppb? Addition, how to determine the regime of VOCs-limited in Figure 5 (a)-(c) in spring and summer in this study? Is it under the condition that the ozone concentration does not change with NOx concentration? Why is only this time period of 2010 -2019 considered in the sections of 4.1 and 4.2?
* response:
We apologize for not being clear enough, the “intermediate” range, i.e. VOC limited thus NOx concentrations do not affect ozone abundances, is a little tricky to precisely quantify with hard cut-offs but we agree with the referee assessment and have updated this statement in the revised manuscript to “For the urban station in Vienna Stephansplatz (figure 5a) three domains based on NOx levels can be identified during spring: low-range NOx (DA NOx < 10 ppb) which is NOx limited, medium-range NOx (10 ppb < DA NOx < 40 ppb) which is VOC limited and high-range NOx (DA NOx > 40 ppb) where ozone concentrations decline with increasing NOx (ozone titration because of relatively low absolute radiation in early spring)”.
We restrict the analysis in Section 4.1 and 4.2 to the last decade (2010-2019) as this time period is most informative for potential future changes in surface ozone following emission controls. We emphasize this now also explicitly in the introduction of section 4.

10. Check the “BVCOs” in Line 329.
Thank you for spotting this typo.

11. Are the descriptions of this Figure 6 (a)-(b) complete? Please add more illustrations to make “BVOCs to be the dominant VOC source in Austria” convincing.
* response:
We apologize for not being clear enough in this section. In the introduction of the manuscript we have cited work published by the Environment Agency Austria documenting that “since 2014 BVOC emissions are thought to be twice as large as national anthropogenic NMVOC emissions (Umweltbundesamt, 2021a). With respect to surface O3 BVOC emissions during spring and summer are most relevant. It was estimated that about 80% of the annual emissions occur during summer (Curci et al., 2009; Curci et al., 2010; Karl et al., 2009; Steinbrecher et al., 2009)”.
Measurements of the complete anthropogenic VOC family are not available. However, at monitoring site AKH within Vienna multiple components are sampled every 6th day since 2011 and analyzed by gas chromatography. From the reversed annual cycle of the total measured anthropogenic VOC load and HCHO ( which is now included as new supplemental figure S5) we deduce that the summertime VOC burden is dominated by the biogenic fraction.

12. Check the “figure S5” in Line 353.
Thank you for spotting this typo.

13. Check the “One the one hand” in Line 399.
Thank you for spotting this typo.

14. Check the “Rural 90” in Table S2.
Thank you for spotting this typo.

15. In the section of introduction, the authors mentioned that anthropogenic NOx emission reductions were effective for O3 abatement and also BVOCs were the main urban VOC source in hot seasons. The urban condition is VOCs-limited according to the text, so does this conclusion of NOx emission reduction apply to the urban sites in Austria?
* response:
Thank you for this comment, indeed this is not true for VOC limited urban environments. We believe the reviewers comment addresses specifically the last sentence of the abstract, which we now revised for clarity: “Accordingly, anthropogenic NOx emission reductions remain, outside of urban cores, the most effective instrument for policy makers to lower surface ozone concentrations in the short term.”

28-Mar-2022

Dear Dr Mayer:

Manuscript ID: EA-ART-01-2022-000004.R1
TITLE: An analysis of 30 years of surface ozone concentrations in Austria: temporal evolution, changes in precursor emissions and chemical regimes, temperature dependence, and lessons for the future

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 minor revisions. One reviewer pointed out issues with readability in the manuscript. I agree with the reviewer that breaking up long sentences and use of active voice (instead of passive voice) would make the present manuscript much more readable.

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 from CASRAI, https://casrai.org/credit/) 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 http://www.rsc.org/journals-books-databases/journal-authors-reviewers/author-responsibilities/ for more information.

I look forward to receiving your revised manuscript.

Yours sincerely,
Dr Tzung-May Fu
Associate Editor
Environmental Science: Atmospheres
Royal Society of Chemistry

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

Reviewer 1

Thanks the authors for careful revision. The authors have addressed all the comments from the reviewer and the revised manuscript is much improved.

My final remark is that while the manuscript is overall readable, it would benefit from being polished by a native speaker. In some cases the sentence is long and not easy to follow. An example is in line 430-432 “Since ozone production is predominantly VOC limited in spring, the reduction of anthropogenic NMVOC emissions is seen in the decrease of the temperature sensitivity caused by moving to less efficient ozone production regimes.”

Reviewer 2

The authors have addressed my questions. I have no more comments.

Dear Editor,
thank you for your positive response regarding our revised submission. Following the suggestions of referee #1 the manuscript has been checked carefully for grammar and edited to improve readability.
Please find enclosed the revised manuscript including a red-line version.

Sincerely,
Monika Mayer

12-Apr-2022

Dear Dr Mayer:

Manuscript ID: EA-ART-01-2022-000004.R2
TITLE: An analysis of 30 years of surface ozone concentrations in Austria: temporal evolution, changes in precursor emissions and chemical regimes, temperature dependence, and lessons for the future

Thank you for submitting your revised manuscript to Environmental Science: Atmospheres. I am pleased to accept your manuscript for publication in its current form.

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Environmental Science: Atmospheres
Royal Society of Chemistry

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