PONE-D-22-28837PM2.5 concentration assessment based on geographical and temporal weighted regression model and MCD19A2 from 2015 to 2020 in Xinjiang, ChinaPLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Xia

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PLOS ONE

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Reviewers' comments:

Reviewer's Responses to Questions

Comments to the Author

1. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions?

The manuscript must describe a technically sound piece of scientific research with data that supports the conclusions. Experiments must have been conducted rigorously, with appropriate controls, replication, and sample sizes. The conclusions must be drawn appropriately based on the data presented.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

Reviewer #3: Yes

Reviewer #4: Partly

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

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

Reviewer #3: Yes

Reviewer #4: No

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3. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available?

The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception (please refer to the Data Availability Statement in the manuscript PDF file). 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

Reviewer #3: Yes

Reviewer #4: No

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

PLOS ONE 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

Reviewer #3: Yes

Reviewer #4: No

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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: “PM2.5 concentration assessment based on geographical and temporal weighted regression model and MCD19A2 from 2015 to 2020 in Xinjinag, China”

High quality and spatial resolution of PM2.5 data is necessary for assessing the air quality and public health. This study proposes an interesting method for deriving the PM2.5 datasets with high quality and spatial resolution. Considering several issues, I recommend for potential publication after Minor revision.

Specific comments:

Title: the authors should clearly state at what temporal scale, which would be better for readers.

Introduction: Line 75-85, the review of PM2.5 retrieval models is insufficient. Though GTWR is a promising method for PM2.5 estimations, recently, some machine learning and deep learning models can also consider spatiotemporal correlation as well as have a higher estimation accuracy. Therefore, the author need to do a further review of PM2.5 retrieval models and talk more about why the GTWR model was chosen for PM2.5 retrievals. For instance, Predicting annual PM 2.5 in mainland China from 2014 to 2020 using multi temporal satellite product: An improved deep learning approach with spatial generalization ability, ISPRS Journal of Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing.

Method: The authors should give a flowchart on more clearly describing the main method. One issue makes me confusing that the GWR is proposed for considering land surface characteristics, while PM2.5 is a non-normal distribution meteorological variable. So the suitability of GWR family for predicting PM 2.5 needs to be further discussed. While for downscaling satellite-based precipitation products, land surface characteristics were generally utilized using GWR method, for instance, A spatial data mining algorithm for downscaling TMPA 3B43 V7 data over the Qinghai–Tibet Plateau with the effects of systematic anomalies removed, Remote Sensing of Environment.

Figures: The quality of all the Figures should be further improved for meeting the publication standard.

Reviewer #2: I'm finding many problems with the grammar and organization that would lead me to suggest that it still needs editing by someone with some subject area experience. While the topic is good and the analysis is well-done, the importance of the research needs to be better explained.

Section Methods. It makes no sense to describe in detail each of the methods. I recommend that the authors omit all the formulas and describe each of their methods more superficially.

The article lacks a critical analysis of the change in PM2.5 and AOD. Pay more attention to the actual variation of these pollutants in different areas of the province. It would be helpful if the authors focused more on dust aerosols and the impact of dust storms. Enough papers have already been published on this topic, so the authors can cite one of published articles.

Why don't the authors mention the accuracy of MODIS products. Moreover, there are many studies on the mutual verification of MODIS and AERONET (Bilal et al., 2019; Filonchyk and Hurynovich, 2020).

"Fig 2. AOD interpolation diagram from 2015-2020". Looking at Figure 2, I noticed that it has nothing to do with the diagram. As I see it, this is the spatial distribution of the AOD.

Why don't authors use the same color scheme for all figures?

References：

Filonchyk, M., & Hurynovich, V. (2020). Validation of MODIS aerosol products with AERONET measurements of different land cover types in areas over Eastern Europe and China. Journal of Geovisualization and Spatial Analysis, 4(1), 1-11.

Bilal, M., Nazeer, M., Nichol, J., Qiu, Z., Wang, L., Bleiweiss, M. P., ... & Lolli, S. (2019). Evaluation of Terra-MODIS C6 and C6. 1 aerosol products against Beijing, XiangHe, and Xinglong AERONET sites in China during 2004-2014. Remote Sensing, 11(5), 486.

Reviewer #3: This manuscript compares several model’s performance in retrieving PM2.5,and give a spatial and temporal patten of PM2.5, it would be better if the research content go a little deeper. Some problems need to be solved:

1. In line 171, you did’t give the mathematical notation for the humidity influence factor.

2. In line 186, the symbol for the random variable disappeared.

3. Table 3 needs to be adjusted to be more aesthetically pleasing.

4. In line 248, the comma was in a wrong place.

5. Does Figure 4 use multi-year average data for analysis? It is not clearly marked.

6. The sentence in line 315, it’s unclear for understanding.

7. The discussion needs to be improved.

Reviewer #4: Review on the manuscript titled “PM2.5 concentration assessment based on geographical and temporal weighted regression model and MCD19A2 from 2015 to 2020 in Xin-jiang, China”.

In this study, the authors applied the SLR, GWR, and GTWR models with MCD19A2, NDVI, DEM, and meteorological data to retrieve PM2.5 concentrations from year 2015 to 2020 in Xinjiang. The performance of each model is compared, the optimal model (GTWR) is selected for PM2.5 inversion. The spatiotemporal distribution characteristics of PM2.5 and meteorological impact factors are further analyzed. This topic is interesting; however, the manuscript is not well organized and the writing of the paper is not good, which makes the manuscript looking more like a project report instead of a scientific research paper. I thinks the paper needs a lot of work to be improved.

Specific comments:

1. All abbreviations appearing at the first time (including abstract) should be given full expression.

2. What is the definition of “small- and medium-size area” ? Is Xijiang (with area of 166×104 km2) a small- and medium-size area? I cannot agree with this subjective description.

3. Line 93-Line107. This paragraph looks like a translation from a project report, which is irrelevant to the major research aim of this paper. Readers cannot get any implications from this paragraph why Xijiang is selected.

4. Line 109: It is better to change “Materials and Methods” to “Data and Method”.

5. Line 114-115 “After excluding the sites with many missing monitoring data and many invalid values”, this description seems very casual. How many sites are in the original dataset? What principle is used to conduct the data quality control? How many sites are deleted?

6. Line 116-118, the authors mentioned that “To match the AOD data in time and space, the average PM2.5 value of each station one hour before and after the satellite transit is calculated to determine the daily, monthly, quarterly, and annual averages of each station”. Using 1-2 hours data to determine the daily, monthly, quarterly and annual averages will raise large uncertainties.

7. Why do the authors only download AOD data for 1st, 15th and 30th of each month?

8. Line 171, which parameter represents the humidity influence factor? “f(RH)” is missing.

9. Line 186, which is a random variable?

10. “Results” and “Discussion” can be combines to Section “Results and Discussions”.

11. What is “AICc”? there is no definition at all.

12. Section “PM2.5 Year Distribution in Xinjing”, this section uses lots of words to describe the phenomenon, without any further explanations.

13. Suggest to move “discussions” to “results” and combine to one Section “Results and Discussions”

14. Conclusion: the 3 paragraphs seems strange, please combine the three paragraphs and conclude the major findings of this study.

15. There are quite a lot of grammar errors or typos, the language should be polished thoroughly.

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Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: No

Reviewer #3: No

Reviewer #4: No

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Attachments

Attachment

Submitted filename: Comments-PONE-D-22-28837.pdf

PONE-D-22-28837R1PM2.5 concentration assessment based on geographical and temporal weighted regression model and MCD19A2 from 2015 to 2020 in Xinjiang, ChinaPLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Xia,

Thank you for submitting your manuscript to PLOS ONE. After careful consideration, we feel that it has merit but does not fully meet PLOS ONE’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.

Please submit your revised manuscript by Mar 30 2023 11:59PM. If you will need more time than this to complete your revisions, please reply to this message or contact the journal office at plosone@plos.org. When you're ready to submit your revision, log on to https://www.editorialmanager.com/pone/ and select the 'Submissions Needing Revision' folder to locate your manuscript file.

Please include the following items when submitting your revised manuscript:

• A rebuttal letter that responds to each point raised by the academic editor and reviewer(s). You should upload this letter as a separate file labeled 'Response to Reviewers'.
• A marked-up copy of your manuscript that highlights changes made to the original version. You should upload this as a separate file labeled 'Revised Manuscript with Track Changes'.
• An unmarked version of your revised paper without tracked changes. You should upload this as a separate file labeled 'Manuscript'.

If you would like to make changes to your financial disclosure, please include your updated statement in your cover letter. Guidelines for resubmitting your figure files are available below the reviewer comments at the end of this letter.

If applicable, we recommend that you deposit your laboratory protocols in protocols.io to enhance the reproducibility of your results. Protocols.io assigns your protocol its own identifier (DOI) so that it can be cited independently in the future. For instructions see: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/submission-guidelines#loc-laboratory-protocols. Additionally, PLOS ONE offers an option for publishing peer-reviewed Lab Protocol articles, which describe protocols hosted on protocols.io. Read more information on sharing protocols at https://plos.org/protocols?utm_medium=editorial-email&utm_source=authorletters&utm_campaign=protocols.

We look forward to receiving your revised manuscript.

Kind regards,

Chun Liu

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

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Reviewers' comments:

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 #2: All comments have been addressed

Reviewer #4: (No Response)

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2. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions?

The manuscript must describe a technically sound piece of scientific research with data that supports the conclusions. Experiments must have been conducted rigorously, with appropriate controls, replication, and sample sizes. The conclusions must be drawn appropriately based on the data presented.

Reviewer #2: Yes

Reviewer #4: Partly

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

Reviewer #2: Yes

Reviewer #4: Yes

**********

4. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available?

The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception (please refer to the Data Availability Statement in the manuscript PDF file). 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 #2: Yes

Reviewer #4: No

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

PLOS ONE 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 #2: Yes

Reviewer #4: Yes

**********

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 #2: The authors have done a good job of improving their manuscript. Therefore, I recommend this article and hope that this article will contribute to the scientific community.

Reviewer #4: The authors have carefully addressed the reviewers’ comments and the quality of the manuscript has been substantially improved. However, my major concern is that this study only used AOD data from the first, 15th, and 30th of each month in Xinjiang from 2015 to 2020. In this case, the results describing trends of PM2.5 will raise large uncertainties. At least detailed comparisons between your retrieved monthly/yearly average results at specific grids (covering the surface sites) and the ground observations covering the long time period should be given. The uncertainties should be carefully discussed. In addition, there are some minor typos that need to be revised.

1. Line 110 “Data” can be deleted.

2. Line 298, two “Fig7”.

3. The figures are not clear.

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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.

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Do you want your identity to be public for this peer review? For information about this choice, including consent withdrawal, please see our Privacy Policy.

Reviewer #2: No

Reviewer #4: No

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[NOTE: If reviewer comments were submitted as an attachment file, they will be attached to this email and accessible via the submission site. Please log into your account, locate the manuscript record, and check for the action link "View Attachments". If this link does not appear, there are no attachment files.]

While revising your submission, please upload your figure files to the Preflight Analysis and Conversion Engine (PACE) digital diagnostic tool, https://pacev2.apexcovantage.com/. PACE helps ensure that figures meet PLOS requirements. To use PACE, you must first register as a user. Registration is free. Then, login and navigate to the UPLOAD tab, where you will find detailed instructions on how to use the tool. If you encounter any issues or have any questions when using PACE, please email PLOS at figures@plos.org. Please note that Supporting Information files do not need this step.

PM2.5 concentration assessment based on geographical and temporal weighted regression model and MCD19A2 from 2015 to 2020 in Xinjiang, China

PONE-D-22-28837R2

Dear Dr. Xia,

We’re pleased to inform you that your manuscript has been judged scientifically suitable for publication and will be formally accepted for publication once it meets all outstanding technical requirements.

Within one week, you’ll receive an e-mail detailing the required amendments. When these have been addressed, you’ll receive a formal acceptance letter and your manuscript will be scheduled for publication.

An invoice for payment will follow shortly after the formal acceptance. To ensure an efficient process, please log into Editorial Manager at http://www.editorialmanager.com/pone/, click the 'Update My Information' link at the top of the page, and double check that your user information is up-to-date. If you have any billing related questions, please contact our Author Billing department directly at authorbilling@plos.org.

If your institution or institutions have a press office, please notify them about your upcoming paper to help maximize its impact. If they’ll be preparing press materials, please inform our press team as soon as possible -- no later than 48 hours after receiving the formal acceptance. Your manuscript will remain under strict press embargo until 2 pm Eastern Time on the date of publication. For more information, please contact onepress@plos.org.

Kind regards,

Chun Liu

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Additional Editor Comments (optional):

Reviewers' comments:

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 #2: (No Response)

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2. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions?

The manuscript must describe a technically sound piece of scientific research with data that supports the conclusions. Experiments must have been conducted rigorously, with appropriate controls, replication, and sample sizes. The conclusions must be drawn appropriately based on the data presented.

Reviewer #2: Yes

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

Reviewer #2: Yes

**********

4. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available?

The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception (please refer to the Data Availability Statement in the manuscript PDF file). 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 #2: No

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

PLOS ONE 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 #2: Yes

**********

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 #2: (No Response)

**********

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.

If you choose “no”, your identity will remain anonymous but your review may still be made public.

Do you want your identity to be public for this peer review? For information about this choice, including consent withdrawal, please see our Privacy Policy.

Reviewer #2: No

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