Interactive comment on “Improved identification

In their manuscript “Improved identification of primary biological aerosol particles using single particle mass spectrometry”, Zawadowicz et al. present a new classification method to distinguish single particles containing “biological” and “inorganic” phosphorus from their mass spectra. The algorithm is developed and tested using single particle mass spectra acquired in laboratory measurements for a number of various different inorganic (mineral dust, fly ash) and biological (pollen, yeast, fungal spores) test aerosols. The applicability of a previously described method for determining bioaerosol using specific markers is also tested on this sample dataset. The new algorithm is applied to a dataset from ambient measurements to determine the number fraction of biological particles.