PCLM-D-22-00060

Modeling the intra-urban nocturnal summertime air temperature fields at a daily basis in a city with complex topography

PLOS Climate

Dear Dr. Burger,

Thank you for submitting your manuscript to PLOS Climate. After careful consideration, we feel that it has merit but does not fully meet PLOS Climate’s publication criteria as it currently stands. Therefore, we invite you to submit a revised version of the manuscript that addresses the points raised during the review process.

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We look forward to receiving your revised manuscript.

Kind regards,

Jun Yang

Academic Editor

PLOS Climate

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Additional Editor Comments (if provided):

Major Revision

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Reviewers' comments:

Reviewer's Responses to Questions

Comments to the Author

1. Does this manuscript meet PLOS Climate’s publication criteria? Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions? The manuscript must describe methodologically and ethically rigorous research with conclusions that are appropriately drawn based on the data presented.

Reviewer #1: Partly

Reviewer #2: Yes

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2. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously?

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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3. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available (please refer to the Data Availability Statement at the start of the manuscript PDF file)?

The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception. The data should be provided as part of the manuscript or its supporting information, or deposited to a public repository. For example, in addition to summary statistics, the data points behind means, medians and variance measures should be available. If there are restrictions on publicly sharing data—e.g. participant privacy or use of data from a third party—those must be specified.

Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: Yes

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4. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English?

PLOS Climate does not copyedit accepted manuscripts, so the language in submitted articles must be clear, correct, and unambiguous. Any typographical or grammatical errors should be corrected at revision, so please note any specific errors here.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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5. Review Comments to the Author

Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters)

Reviewer #1: The manuscript entitled “Modeling the intra-urban nocturnal summertime air temperature fields at a daily basis in a city with complex topography” developed some land use regression models based on meteorological measurements, land use variables, and cold air drainage indices to predict nighttime UHI intensity in Bern, Switzerland. The models have reasonably well accuracy, although they poorly reproduce some finer scale variability. One of my major concerns is whether the model can be used for daytime UHI intensity. The authors did not explain why they focused on nighttime conditions. A substantial revision is necessary to clarify many details of this work. Here are my specific comments.

Major concerns:

Lines 54-55: “A common characteristic of these approaches is that a very limited timespan with homogeneous synoptic conditions” – not true. Several long-term (seasonal or annual) physics-based urban climate modeling studies have been conducted using, e.g., urban canopy models or mesoscale models (for example, WRF model).

Lines 74-75: “Such cooling airflows are mainly caused by drainage due to hilly terrain [25] and are difficult to include in LUR models” - it is not quite clear to me why cooling airflows cannot be included in LUR models. The authors mentioned above the LUR can take into account air temperature, wind speed, and RH. Why cannot these variables serve as the proxy? Another related question is, can LUR properly reflect the impact of urban morphology (including building geometry and street orientation)?

Lines 96-103: The color of elevation and land use shown in Fig. 1B does not match the color shown in the legend. In addition, please mark “Jura”, “Alps”, etc. in Fig. 1A.

Lines 121-123: Please explain why only nighttime temperature is considered in the model.

Line 126: “influence of the altitude is directly incorporated with the standard atmospheric lapse rate of 0.65 K per 100 m” – The authors need to justify the use of a constant lapse rate, especially during nighttime when temperature inversion possibly exists.

Lines 140-150: More details are needed in terms of, e.g., the accuracy of land cover classification and the resolution of each dataset.

Lines 152-171: What is the raw resolution of the DEM data? Can DEM data resolve building height? Did the authors simply use elevation + mean building height to represent DSM in each pixel/cell? If so, this is a very rough estimate.

Table 2: If my understanding is correct, the authors introduced the radiation, precipitation, RH, and wind speed + direction measured at the reference station into the prediction of temperature variation within the urban area. But it should be mentioned that measurements at the reference station CANNOT represent urban heterogeneity.

Lines 237-238: “global solar radiation and relative humidity showed a high collinearity, which is why relative humidity was not included in the final meteorological model” – if the authors’ main purpose of using models is prediction instead of the interpretation of each variable’s effect, why did the authors consider collinearity? This will not impact the overall prediction.

Table 3: The authors need to explain each variable. What is NR (Yes)? What is MET? Are these models for UHI intensity prediction? If so, how do they differ from ADD, MULT, and INT models? Also in Table 4, why does each CAD variable have its own models? Shouldn’t the authors use a global model? A detailed description of the difference between Table 3 and Table 4 is necessary.

Lines 280-284: “A strongly pronounced UHI is predicted by the ADD model (Fig 4B)” – UHI in 4B is much weaker than 4A. “A weak UHI is predicted by the INT model, which results in a better model performance for that night (Fig 4F).” – it is extremely hard to tell which model is better from the spatial comparison, especially when 4F has a lower r than 4B and 4D.

Lines 427-437 and Figs. 4 and 5: I am a bit concerned about the accuracy of these spatial maps. Considering the limited number of stations the study used, I strongly suggest the authors use remotely sensed land surface temperature / air temperature to cross-check these maps.

Lines 439-455: This part remains superficial. No additional analyses have been performed.

Data availability: It is unclear how the readers could access the raw measurement data.

Minor comments:

Lines 42-44: The authors should also mention low albedo.

Reviewer #2: Overall, this paper is good in topic and the analysis is quite comprehensive. I suggest authors should focus on the nocturnal island intensity analysis and its driving factors. The estimation of this intensity is meaningless to me since you have not well revealed the influential factors. Please remove the estimation section and focus on the linkage between uhii, rr, ws, ... and the land use cover. Please furthermore shorten the paper since my information is redunctant.

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Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: No

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Modeling the intra-urban nocturnal summertime air temperature fields at a daily basis in a city with complex topography

PCLM-D-22-00060R1

Dear Mr. Burger,

We are pleased to inform you that your manuscript 'Modeling the intra-urban nocturnal summertime air temperature fields at a daily basis in a city with complex topography' has been provisionally accepted for publication in PLOS Climate.

Before your manuscript can be formally accepted you will need to complete some formatting changes, which you will receive in a follow-up email from a member of our team. 

Please note that your manuscript will not be scheduled for publication until you have made the required changes, so a swift response is appreciated.

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Thank you again for supporting Open Access publishing; we are looking forward to publishing your work in PLOS Climate.

Best regards,

Jun Yang

Academic Editor

PLOS Climate

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Accept

Reviewer Comments (if any, and for reference):

Reviewer's Responses to Questions

Comments to the Author

1. If the authors have adequately addressed your comments raised in a previous round of review and you feel that this manuscript is now acceptable for publication, you may indicate that here to bypass the “Comments to the Author” section, enter your conflict of interest statement in the “Confidential to Editor” section, and submit your "Accept" recommendation.

Reviewer #1: All comments have been addressed

Reviewer #2: All comments have been addressed

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2. Does this manuscript meet PLOS Climate’s publication criteria? Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions? The manuscript must describe methodologically and ethically rigorous research with conclusions that are appropriately drawn based on the data presented.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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3. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously?

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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4. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available (please refer to the Data Availability Statement at the start of the manuscript PDF file)?

The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception. The data should be provided as part of the manuscript or its supporting information, or deposited to a public repository. For example, in addition to summary statistics, the data points behind means, medians and variance measures should be available. If there are restrictions on publicly sharing data—e.g. participant privacy or use of data from a third party—those must be specified.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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5. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English?

PLOS Climate does not copyedit accepted manuscripts, so the language in submitted articles must be clear, correct, and unambiguous. Any typographical or grammatical errors should be corrected at revision, so please note any specific errors here.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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6. Review Comments to the Author

Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters)

Reviewer #1: The manuscript has been improved in this round of revision. Thanks for the effort.

Reviewer #2: After reading through the revised version, I think authors have well addressed all my concerns. Therefore, I suggest the acceptance of this paper.

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7. PLOS authors have the option to publish the peer review history of their article (what does this mean?). If published, this will include your full peer review and any attached files.

Do you want your identity to be public for this peer review? If you choose “no”, your identity will remain anonymous but your review may still be made public.

For information about this choice, including consent withdrawal, please see our Privacy Policy.

Reviewer #1: Yes: Chenghao Wang

Reviewer #2: No

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