The objective of this comment is to correct two sets of statements in Litwin et al. (2022,
High‐impact poor air quality events, such as Beijing's so‐called “Airpocalypse” in January 2013, demonstrate that short‐lived poor air quality events can have significant effects on health and economic vitality. Poor air quality events result from the combination of the emission of pollutants and meteorological conditions favorable to their accumulation, which include limited scavenging, dispersion, and ventilation. The unprecedented nature of events such as the 2013 Airpocalypse, in conjunction with our nonstationary climate, motivate an assessment of whether climate change has altered the meteorological conditions conducive to poor winter air quality in Beijing. Using three indices designed to quantify the meteorological conditions that support poor air quality and drawing on the attribution methods of Diffenbaugh et al. (2017,
- Award ID(s):
- 1848683
- NSF-PAR ID:
- 10458317
- Publisher / Repository:
- DOI PREFIX: 10.1029
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres
- Volume:
- 124
- Issue:
- 8
- ISSN:
- 2169-897X
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- p. 4567-4583
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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Abstract https://doi.org/10.1029/2021JF006239 ), which consider our research work (Bonetti et al., 2018,https://doi.org/10.1098/rspa.2017.0693 ; Bonetti et al., 2020,https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1911817117 ). We clarify here that (a) the specific contributing area is defined in the limit of an infinitesimal contour length instead of the product of a reference contour width (Bonetti et al., 2018,https://doi.org/10.1098/rspa.2017.0693 ), and (b) not all solutions obtained from the minimalist landscape evolution model of Bonetti et al. (2020,https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1911817117 ) are rescaled copies of each other. We take this opportunity to demonstrate that the boundary conditions impact the obtained solutions, which has not been considered in the dimensional analysis of Litwin et al. (2022,https://doi.org/10.1029/2021JF006239 ). We clarify this point by using dimensional analysis and numerical simulations for a square domain, where only one horizontal length scale (the side lengthl ) enters the physical law. -
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