the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
| 29 Oct 2025
Long-term analysis of atmospheric propane over Southern Europe based on observations conducted at the WMO-GAW station of Monte Cimone
Abstract. This study presents the analysis of a 13-year time series of continuous measurements of propane (C3H8) from the WMO-GAW station of Monte Cimone (CMN, Italy) between 2011 and 2023. Background trend and pollution events are evaluated to establish how this remote site is influenced by regional and/or global emissions. C3H8 background mixing ratios did not substantially vary over the study period with a slight decrease of -0.003 [-0.004; -0.002; 95 % confidence interval] ppb per year. However, C3H8 seasonal amplitude showed an increase of about 0.16 % per year from 77.5 to 79.5 % in the study period, with most of the increase between 2016 and 2023. Based on back-trajectory sensitivity analysis, CMN and JFJ were found to be predominantly influenced by air masses originating from the central European continent and the western Mediterranean basin. Using the 2022 observations of CMN and Jungfraujoch (Switzerland) stations, and the Flexpart-Flexinvert inverse modeling framework, we estimated the distribution of regional emissions and compared it with the EDGAR bottom-up emission inventory. In particular, for Italy and France, prior emissions of C3H8 were underestimated by a factor of 3 and 2, respectively, likely due to overlooked C3H8 emissions sources and/or inaccurate activity data used to compile the bottom-up inventory.
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Status: open (until 03 Jan 2026)
- RC1: 'Comment on egusphere-2025-5098', Anonymous Referee #1, 24 Nov 2025 reply
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The manuscript "Long-term analysis of atmospheric propane over Southern Europe based on observations conducted at the WMO-GAW station of Monte Cimone" presents a 13-year time series of propane, measured at Monte Cimone, Italy. Notably, all the data are available and can be immediately accessed, and I applaud the authors for keeping the monitoring station active and making the data openly accessible.
I really enjoyed reading this manuscript and consider it a nice piece of work. While some readers might find the detailed analysis tedious, I believe this work is essential for detailed investigations of our atmosphere.
Nevertheless, I have a few minor comments for the authors to consider.
Major comment:
This preprint is under review for Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics (ACP). According to the journal's scope, "Articles should have important and clearly argued implications for our understanding of the state and behavior of the atmosphere [...]". I consider this work valuable and important, as it confirms much of the previous work on C3H8. However, not all readers may share this view. Please, consider presenting this manuscript as a "Measurement Report".
Minor comments:
Line 6): JFJ is used but has not been defined. Please check the consistency with the following sentence.
Line 132): I suggest removing "slight" as the trend is anyhow statistically significant.
Line 290): It would be beneficial to briefly compare other emissions databases (e.g., CAMS or CEDS) for the three countries investigated. Similarly, it would be helpful to again cite a few articles mentioned in the introduction that show the underestimation of emissions has been known since 2018 (Dalsoren et al., 2018).
Line 295): There is a missing period (.) before "Similar".
Figure 10): I recommend using "CH" for Switzerland (instead of "CHE").