Response Relationship between the Regional Thermal Environment and Urban Forms during Rapid Urbanization (2000–2010–2020): A Case Study of Three Urban Agglomerations in China
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
The proposed study focused on the regional heat island changes to urban morphological variations at the urban agglomeration scale, and potential driving factors were statistically analyzed. Overall, the methods and analysis are promising. This work can be accepted after addressing several major issues, such as enhancing the innovations or new knowledge from this study, providing more explanations of the results, and re-editing the manuscript.
Major:
In the introduction, this study emphasized that such regional heat island analysis is rarely analyzed at the agglomeration level (Line 62), can you explain the advantage of doing such work at a larger spatial level? Besides, is there any difference between basic conclusions from this study and previous studies working on a single city?
Do the authors deal with the missing LST values caused by cloud coverage, does this issue has any potential impact on the results?
In Figure 6, why does LSI play a dominant role in Medium urban intensity but suddenly become the least important factor in high urban intensity samples? Why does PLAND have a small contribution at medium urban intensity than the other two intensity levels? Such clear changes need to be well explained rather than just state the statistics results from Fig 6.
Results and basic conclusions should be compared with previous studies and enhance your contributions.
What’s the purpose of including cold island classifications (Table 2) in the analysis?
Minor:
There are so many duplicated blanks, e.g., line 29 after ‘while’, in the whole context, please find and delete them all.
There are some unnecessary blanks before ‘,’ in the whole context, such as Line 23 after Delta
The citation numbers are wrong, the reference of [11] is missing, and other citations are not correctly matched with the number. I strongly suggest that the manuscript needs to be carefully re-edited.
The format of the numbers and symbols are not correct, please revise them carefully through the context, e.g., Line 113: km2 -> km2, and ° should be at the top right.
MYD11 is from Aqua, of which passing time is around 13:30 pm and 01:30 am
The citation format should be consistent (Line 151)
Lines 168-169: do you mean “small patches less than 2 km2”? Why do you remove patches with areas larger than 2 km2
Line 170: what does the ‘reference’ mean here?
Eq 1: looks like LSTrural is just the average of entire rural areas and has no relation to pixel i? why the symbol i is marked on i. Based on the equation here, it is not easy to interpret. Besides, the i of LSTi should be the subscript (Line 179), please also check this issue over the context again.
P-value should be included in all subfigures of Figure 5, and it is hard to imagine Figure 5a has a p-value less than 0.01.
Author Response
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: 
Author Response.docx
Reviewer 2 Report
This is a well-written manuscript concerning the relationships of urban form and urban heat island in large urban agglomerations. The methods used are sound as well, and I found the manuscript generally interesting.
My main question to the authors is to clarify within the manuscript how different data sources were used. In particular, I am not clear how the MODIS LST data captured for 10:30 a.m. and 10:30 p.m. were used in conjunction to the night-time LST data? How was the digital elevation model used?
My other minor comments include:
Line 42 – is the 120 000 km2 a global figure – if so, I suggest adding “globally” after kilometers
Line 78 – consider replacing “most” with “A majority of”
Line 165 Please briefly describe the method used to extract the urban and rural areas
Author Response
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
Reviewer 3 Report
The authors present a work entitled, "Response relationship between the regional thermal environment and urban forms during rapid urbanization (2000-2010-2020); A case study of three urban agglomerations in China.", which combines the usage of remotely-sensed land surface temperatures and land cover datasets. The authors claim that the highlights of the work is the wide-area focus considering the regional-scale thermal environment and their decadal changes from 2000, 2020, and 2020. With a lot of analyses being done, I believe the work shows promise after massive revisions for clarity (possibly the figures and strange statements), a more detailed interpretation of the findings, and scientific soundness (in relation to clarity). The authors are advised to address the following comments.
1. The heat island intensities and their generalizations: The authors should distinctly differentiate the urban heat island intensities calculated from land surface temperatures (SUHI) to that of the air. The mechanisms and significance of these two are different, where the latter is generally more socially significant because it is directly experienced by people.
2. L274, the locations and mechanisms of the "strip-like" and "ring-like" forms are unclear. A zoomed figure 3 while pinpoints of these forms are necessary. These are interesting features, but it's difficult to distinguish in the maps.
3. The usage of "heat sources" in the statements (e.g. "existing heat sources constantly swallowing up the surrounding environment" is a strange and non-scientific statement) is unclear. "Heat source" should be clearly defined and compared with the RHII. Is this referring to anthropogenic heat sources or the sensible heating response of the urban surface from the energy balance.
4. The authors should comment on the influence of anthropogenic heating in their findings.
5. The authors should discuss in more detail about the result of BTH on Fig. 4. This is an interesting finding but there is no discussion whether the finding is valid or the mechanisms behind this. The only relevant statement is L291 to L293, which is unclear.
6. L198 to L199 is interesting. Why use Log10 in deriving the OLS regression and not the linear values?
7. Multiple statements are unclear in the manuscript. They need to be revised for clarity.
7.1. What is the meaning of "deterioration"? How is this quantified?
7.2. Some statements require a clearer explanation of the physical mechanisms.
7.3. What is the definition of "response relationship" in the title, and how is it evaluated clearly in the manuscript?
7.4. L269: "distinct revolution pattern" or "evolution pattern"?
7.5. L252 to L254 is a vague sentence. Describe it simply.
7.6. Describe the way to calculate the "variance inflation factor" and the bases for the "rule of thumb" (L212)
7.7. L193: What is the definition of the "class level"?
7.8. What is the physical definition of "built-up intensity map"? The methodology stated in L167 to L173 is unclear and needs to be revised. A flowchart might also be necessary. It is unclear how to decide the "rural" setting
7.9. L330 to L344 seems to be interesting, but is quite vague. The authors should consider breaking down multiple topics of these paragraph into separate paragraphs. For example, why the sudden mention of "buffer zones"?
7.10 L429 to L430 sentence is vague.
8. The mechanisms of the intensity values in the discussion: The authors analyzed mainly daytime data according to L144. What are the implications of these? Are the interpretations or explanations of the mechanisms carefully describing this daytime pattern, or is it for nighttime as well?
9. L155 and L156 datasets need references.
10. The reasoning mentioned in L497 to L499 (i.e. distribution of heat source was highly consistent with the location of the built-up area) seems to be quite obvious and widely established in previous studies.
Author Response
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
Round 2
Reviewer 1 Report
I appreciate the authors for their explanations and revised work.
Author Response
Thanks for your comments, which means a lot for our work!
Reviewer 3 Report
The authors have improved the manuscript but partially misunderstood the comments and the tasks that they should overcome to accept the manuscript. As an overall evaluation of the manuscript, the authors seem to have advanced skill in remote sensing but seem to lack the understanding of urban climate and the mechanisms behind them because of the terminologies that were used. This can be improved by having the work submitted for professional editing, simplification of the statements, improvements in the assumption/limitation statements. Having this work accepted at its current state is still not recommended for a prestigious journal such as "Remote Sensing".
1. They're reponse on the first comment about the "Surface Urban Heat Island" and "Canopy-level or near-surface urban heat island" is indirectly addressing this concern. The authors should discuss these two modes of urban heat islands and that their findings should be limited only to interpretations of "surface urban heat islands". This must also be reflected in the manuscript as an assumption/limitation of the work.
2. The statement explaining the cooling of Cangzhou is unclear (and hence, strange), "As the neighboring cities of the Beijing-Tianjin ring, the large amount of afforestation activities in order to establish the ecological barrier...". Avoid complicated statements throughout the manuscript. Please revise all complicated/unclear statements.
3. "The sub-strong heat island (SSHI) and strong heat island (SHI) areas were regarded as heat sources in the region." should be "The sub-strong heat island (SSHI) and strong heat island (SHI) areas identify the hot spots in the region. Here, we regard this areas as heat sources."
4. The response for comment 6 on Log10 of the OLS regression should be reflected in the revised manuscript.
5. "The expansion of the heat source area, namely the increase of the high temperature class area is considered as the deterioration of the thermal environment problem" is still unclear. Why not, "The expansion of areas with high temperature class characterizes a deterioration of the thermal environment".
6. Response 7.2. The statement is unclear, non-scientific, and seems to be rushed. Research articles have to be specific and concise. Specifics are as follows,
"... has reached a certain scale," (what scale?)
"The more complex shape means that the urban built-up areas are not regular in shape" (this statement is referring to the same thing)
"The contribution role of LIS comes to the fore,... from the hidden land cover combination configuration behind them" (this is a vague statement.)
7. Response 7.5 "In the three different time stage, ..., while the values of both BTH and YRD are closer." "closer" is referring to what?
8. Response 7.6 (bases of the rule of thumb). How is the variance inflation factor calculed by the SPSS? And why is the rule of thumb 7.5?
9. What is the mechanism for "negative spillover effect"? This is a statement mainly used in economics. What is this referring to in meteorology or climatology?
10. I strongly recommend having this proofread by professional services such as Editage.
Author Response
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
This manuscript is a resubmission of an earlier submission. The following is a list of the peer review reports and author responses from that submission.
