A Multi-Country Statistical Analysis Covering Turkey, Slovakia, and Romania in an Educational Framework

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

1. Authors performed regression analysis between relative humidity and temperature and PM10, 2.5 and 1 in three countries during summer months. However, authors didn't clearly specify this goal in the introduction and introduce sufficient scientific work to justify the necessity of performing this study. I believe such question has been extensively studied at other locations so authors should work on explaining why this question needs to be answered in the current paper.
2. Authors didn't specify the time intervals and sampling frequency in the Materials and Methods part.
3. In the results part, Figures 2-4 are lacking units associated with the parameters. Table 2 doesn’t show what is the parameter showing here. For Tables 3-5, authors didn't explain the meaning of the parameters here. The quality of these tables and figures are low and don't meet scientific publication standards.
4. In explaining the results, authors only showed how much of PM concentrations are explained by temperature and humidity, without further discussing the implications of these results, which makes the paper lack scientific soundness and depth.
5. The conclusions are not directly relevant to the problems in this study.

In conclusion, the current study doesn't meet the requirement of scientific publication so I have to reject it.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

Please take a look at the attachment. Thank you for the constructive criticism and comments that most certainly helped us to improve the quality of our paper. In the attachments are our answers to each issue, item by item. Also, the figures and tables are inserted within the main body of the manuscript.

We hope the revised version of the manuscript meets your expectations.

Thank you for your time.

Respectfully,

The authors

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

There are several formal shortcomings in the paper :

• The text uses abbreviations that are not explained (e.g. SPSS, PM, MEM, CAMS .....)

• Chapter 3, the text lacks a reference to tab. 1

• The tables lack a description of what data they show

 

In addition, the authors could describe the parts in more detail:

Chapter 2.1

• Placement and location of sensors, it is not clear what part of the country it is (plain, valley, mountain area...), geographical conditions

• infrastructure is not described - greenery, buildings, transport, industry...

• the areas are not described in the same way, they do not provide the same data,

Chapter 2.2

·  it is not stated at which intervals the data were scanned (what should be imagined under the term 650 thousand data?)

Chapter 2.3

• the methodology is described only on a general level, as the chapter has no meaning unless it describes the method of using a specific analysis

Chapter 3

• tab.1 – the results of which tests it shows, is it a summary table of measured values or was some test or recalculation used?

• tab.3 to 5 – regression analysis outputs without description of symbols and their meaning for the regression model (B, β, SE, R2, ΔR ...)

• The last paragraph of chapter 3 does not make sense, as if it does not belong there.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

Please take a look at the attachment. Thank you for the constructive criticism and comments that helped us improve the quality of our paper. The attachments contain our answers to each issue, item by item. Also, the figures and tables are inserted within the main body of the manuscript.

We hope the revised version of the manuscript meets your expectations.

Thank you for your time.

Respectfully,

The authors

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The work is interesting even though it contains some limitations. In particular:  the dataset contains data only for three months;  the sensors do not collect data regarding extreme winds or sunshine duration; the method of measuring PM concentration is different from the one used by national environmental agencies. The effects of these limitations have to be analyzed in the conclusions.

 

The authors use hierarchical regression analysis to explore the correlations between two meteorological parameters and three particulate matter concentrations. The dataset is provided by six sensors located in three cities from three countries, and the measurements were taken simultaneously for three months at each minute.    

 

The results underscore the complexity of air pollution dynamics, show how the results are affected by the location even when the same type of sensors is used, and emphasize that a one-size-fits-all approach cannot effectively address air pollution.

 

The findings are helpful from three perspectives: for education„ to show how to handle and communicate a solution for local communities' issue about air pollution; for research, to understand how easy a university can generate and analyze open-source data; and for policymakers, to design targeted interventions addressing each country's challenges.
 

 

The main limitations of this study are the following: the dataset contains data only for three months; the sensors do not collect data regarding extreme winds or sunshine duration;  the method of measuring PM concentration is different from the one used by national environmental agencies.

 

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

Please take a look at the attachment. Thank you for your comments, which helped us improve the quality of our paper.  

Thank you for your time.

Respectfully,

The authors

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Manuscript can be accepted.

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

I have no further comments

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Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

We want to express our gratitude for your effort and time in helping us to improve the quality of our paper.

Please, see the attachment.

Thank you again.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf