Evolution Patterns of Cooling Island Effect in Blue–Green Space under Different Shared Socioeconomic Pathways Scenarios

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Qualityof the writing is very good.

Author Response

We appreciate the positive, supportive, and insightful feedback from you. We are very grateful for your thorough reading of this study. We have carefully revised the manuscript and believe that by taking into account all our responses to the comments below, the overall quality of this manuscript, including the robustness of the scientific results, the rationality of the discussion, the accuracy of the writing, and the legibility of the figures, has substantially improved. Please find our response to each specific comment in the table below. The reviewers’ comments are presented in the first column of the table and are in red, our responses are in black in the second column, and the corresponding revised text or figures in the revised manuscript are provided in the third column. When the answer refers to manuscript page and line numbers, these are the corresponding numbers in the document entitled "Manuscript_with_revised_changes_marked".

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Blue-green space has a cooling effect on cities. It is also important to understand the urban heat island effect. This paper presents the predicted temporal evolution and spatial patterns of the cooling effect due to the blue-green space in various cities under different scenarios. I think this paper would be interested by readers who work on climate change and related fields. Overall, the paper is well-organized. The methods are clear, and the results are reasonable. I don't think this article needs an overhaul. Based on the current version, I would like to recommend a minor revision before acceptance.

Several comments are listed below:

1. Figures are seemly drawn with low resolution. 

2. Will an overall work flowchart be helpful to understand the study?

3. Lines 172-182: Which temperature is used to verify? Surface temperature, or air temperature at a specific altitude?

4. Figures 3&4: is it impossible to draw the subplots with the same legends? It could make the comparison more straightforward. 

5. The 15 global climate models in CMIP6 are with different spatial resolutions as shown in Table 1. Would it affect the prediction and analysis of the cooling effect due to the blue-green space?

Author Response

We appreciate the positive, supportive, and insightful feedback from you. We are very grateful for your thorough reading of this study. We have carefully revised the manuscript and believe that by taking into account all our responses to the comments below, the overall quality of this manuscript, including the robustness of the scientific results, the rationality of the discussion, the accuracy of the writing, and the legibility of the figures, has substantially improved. Please find our response to each specific comment in the table below. The reviewers’ comments are presented in the first column of the table and are in red, our responses are in black in the second column, and the corresponding revised text or figures in the revised manuscript are provided in the third column. When the answer refers to manuscript page and line numbers, these are the corresponding numbers in the document entitled "Manuscript_with_revised_changes_marked".

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

The study ‘Evolution patterns of cooling island effect in blue-green space under different SSPs scenarios’ undertakes a very interesting subject of the evolution of urban cooling island in the future, considering the land use issues. The paper is well composed and clearly presented and is worth publishing in the Journal. Below are my suggestions and recommendations regarding selected problems.

 

The most important issue is why did the authors take only 5-year period for the evaluation of present conditions, while the future periods cover 20 years each? According to some world reports, air temperature in 2015-2020 was significantly higher than in the past decades. Thus, thermal conditions in this 5-year period could not directly reflect the values representative for the current state.

 

Line 24 and 175: phrases describing particular decades (such as 2030s, 2025s, etc.) should be deleted as they do not correspond directly with the presented 20-year periods.

 

Introduction: Although this section is well composed and supported with the reference of numerous studies, there is no goal of the study specified. This should clearly present what is the paper aiming at and what potential benefits can bring the undertaken research.

 

I would suggest not using the past time while describing the future conditions. Such a description can be found in line 220: ‘Overall, during the period of 2020 to 2080, the cultivated land area and grassland area decreased greatly, while the cultivated land area increased greatly’. In this case, I would suggest using such phrases as ‘can increase’ or ‘can decrease’.

 

There is no need to repeat the range of the study in the Conclusions section. In this case, focusing on the potential effects in UCI changes in the future in the considered urban areas should be more expressive.

Author Response

We appreciate the positive, supportive, and insightful feedback from you. We are very grateful for your thorough reading of this study. We have carefully revised the manuscript and believe that by taking into account all our responses to the comments below, the overall quality of this manuscript, including the robustness of the scientific results, the rationality of the discussion, the accuracy of the writing, and the legibility of the figures, has substantially improved. Please find our response to each specific comment in the table below. The reviewers’ comments are presented in the first column of the table and are in red, our responses are in black in the second column, and the corresponding revised text or figures in the revised manuscript are provided in the third column. When the answer refers to manuscript page and line numbers, these are the corresponding numbers in the document entitled "Manuscript_with_revised_changes_marked".

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

It  does not appear that the authors have addressed my concerns. Although minor changes such as relabeling the tables have been made other suggested changes have not been made such as the scaling in figures 3 and 4. Although the authors have included a table of WRF configuration parameters, they still have not explained why WRF was used. Further they upped the number of levels from 26 to 33, as noted in the original review the number of levels should be 50 or higher UHI/UCI studies and the layers should be concentrated in the lowest layers.

 

Author Response

Dear Reviewer, thank you for your valuable feedback and for taking the time to review our paper. We appreciate your concerns and would like to address them in this response. We apologize if our previous revision did not sufficiently address your concerns, and we assure you that we are committed to addressing them adequately in this revised version. 

The manuscript was revised based on the inputs received from you. The major changes are listed below:

• We have addressed your questions, comments, and suggestions on the methods, results, and discussion in detail. As required, we have added more information to clarify and justify the use of some terms, data and methods, added additionally recommended references, and revised some statements for improved clarity and the benefit of the readers.
• We have rewritten parts of the introduction based on your comments.
• As suggested by the Reviewer, we have rewritten the Conclusion section to make it succinct. Now, this section is in one paragraph and highlights the key "take-home" messages.
• We have also immensely revised section 2 < Data and methodology > and provided clarity as suggested by the Reviewer.
• As suggested by the Associate Editor and you, the quality of writing throughout the manuscript, including structure of the sentences, choice of words, and grammar have been substantially improved.

 

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf