Changes in Meteorological Elements and Its Impacts on Yunnan Plateau Lakes
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
The subject matter is useful and within the scope of the journal. However, please consider the following comments in the revised manuscript:
- I cannot find quantitative results in the abstract section. Please revised it.
- I cannot find a systematic literature review by considering two keywords “climate change” and “lakes”
- At the end of introduction section, please summarized literature review and present novelty and goals of the study.
- Please use “Methodology” instead of “Material and Method” in section 2.
- Please present a flowchart to describe the methodology, more clearly.
- I cannot find a reference for original work of the “Innovation Trend Analysis (ITA)”!
- In the conclusion section, please discuss on the limitations of the study and further directions.
Author Response
Dear reviewers:
Thank you for your comments on our manuscript entitled "Title". These comments have been very helpful in revising and improving our paper and have been an important guide for other research. We have carefully studied these comments and have made corrections that we hope will be approved.
Point 1: I cannot find quantitative results in the abstract section. Please revised it.
Response 1: We modified the abstract in the text. Initially our abstract was too long and did not meet the requirements of the journal (the journal requires that it be as concise as possible), and we streamlined the abstract section by presenting the results directly and removing as many unnecessary parts as possible. The trends in climate factor variability and geographical heterogeneity are indicated in the abstract.
Point 2: I cannot find a systematic literature review by considering two keywords “climate change” and “lakes”.
Response 2: Thank you for the reminder that we neglected to add the literature on this topic. We have added references on the keywords "climate change" and "lakes" to increase the professionalism of our article, for example:(1)Lakes as sentinels of climate change;(2)Deeper waters are changing less consistently than surface waters in a global analysis of 102 lakes;(3)Global lake responses to climate change;(4)Climatic effects on the phenology of lake processes;(5)Phenological shifts in lake stratification under climate change;(6)Space observations of inland water bodies show rapid surface warming since 1985,etc.
Point 3: At the end of introduction section, please summarized literature review and present novelty and goals of the study.
Response 3: We have made additions based on the comments. The objectives of the article include (1) understanding the trends of climate factors over long time periods (2) analyzing climate change processes with regional cases (3) The nine highland lakes in Yunnan lack overall climate change trend analysis as well as geographic variation analysis, and our study can fill this gap.
Point 4: Please use “Methodology” instead of “Material and Method” in section 2.
Response 4: Thank you for the reminder, we have corrected it in the text.
Point 5: Please present a flowchart to describe the methodology, more clearly.
Response 5: We have added a technical roadmap to the article in the first section so that we can more clearly represent.
Point 6: I cannot find a reference for original work of the “Innovation Trend Analysis (ITA)”!
Response 6: Thank you for the reminder that we did not cite it in the text, we found the original paper on innovation trend analysis and added it to the text. doi: 10.1061/(ASCE)HE.1943-5584.0000556.
Point 7: In the conclusion section, please discuss on the limitations of the study and further directions.
Response 7: Our study is flawed in that we only analyzed meteorological factors without further in-depth analysis in conjunction with lake ecosystem response. In our follow-up work, we will further collect lake water temperature and other monitoring data to explore the relationship between climate change and lake ecosystem response, as well as the future impact of climate change on lakes.
Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
I read the article with interest and attention. It is a good article that can be improved. The following need to be corrected:
Changes in meteorological elements and its impacts on Yunnan Plateau lakes
1- The title of the article should be changed according to the text as follows:
2- The figures and maps are small and of low quality and should be inserted larger and with a higher resolution.
3- I am not a native English speaker, but the text should be reviewed by a native. I did not feel any problem with the English language of the article.
4- A number of similar articles have been written about lakes in other countries, especially in the plateau of Iran, such as Lake Urmia, and it is better to compare their results with the results of this article in this study. 5- The conclusion part is the repetition of the results and should be rewritten in general.
Author Response
Point 1: The title of the article should be changed according to the text as follows:
Response 1: Thank you for your revision, our study is flawed, we only did the analysis of meteorological factors, we did not further combine the response of the lake ecosystem for in-depth analysis, so there is a problem with the past title, we did not find it, we will re-correct it, thanks again.
Point 2: The figures and maps are small and of low quality and should be inserted larger and with a higher resolution.
Response 2: We have changed the graphics in the article and recreated them in higher quality. In addition, we have re-added two higher quality graphics and hope that the teacher will correct them.
Point 3: I am not a native English speaker, but the text should be reviewed by a native. I did not feel any problem with the English language of the article..
Response 3: We sought out English scholars with relevant majors and made revisions and adjustments..
Point 4: A number of similar articles have been written about lakes in other countries, especially in the plateau of Iran, such as Lake Urmia, and it is better to compare their results with the results of this article in this study.
Response 4: Thanks to our teacher's suggestion, we have re-found relevant references to increase the professionalism of our article, including:(1)Lakes as sentinels of climate change;(2)Deeper waters are changing less consistently than surface waters in a global analysis of 102 lakes;(3)Global lake responses to climate change;(4)Climatic effects on the phenology of lake processes;(5)Phenological shifts in lake stratification under climate change;(6)Space observations of inland water bodies show rapid surface warming since 1985,etc.In terms of results, we cited some papers from the same region to compare. Teacher, you mentioned Lake Urmia in Iran, and I read the article about it, and their study is more in-depth, mainly for the actual impact of climate change on the lake, such as water shortage, changes in algal biomass, etc. Our next step will be to conduct research in this area, but we are still in the process of data collection.
Point 5: The conclusion part is the repetition of the results and should be rewritten in general.
Response 5: We thank you for reminding us that the journal requires a concise abstract and a more detailed conclusion section. Our initial draft was more concise in the conclusion section and did not express more results, and we readjusted the changes and added deficiencies and limitations to the conclusion section.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 3 Report
The title of the MS is misleading as authors did not present data on lakes but only analyses of the variability of climatic factors which are presumably will affect study lakes. I expected that authors also will use data collected on lakes (water temperature or other monitoring data) to find correlations between climatic factors and lake ecosystem responses. You may see two papers not cited in the text which deal both with climatic factors and real lakes responses. I strongly encourage authors to find observation data on lakes or to use satellite data to estimate lake surface temperature and preform correlation analyses between climatic factors and lakes responses (at least surface water temperature that can be estimated from satellite data). If authors will find data on the water temperatures profiles and correlate the depth of the thermocline or some biological characteristics with climatic faсtors the manuscript will be excellent.
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00343-018-7329-9
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-76873-x
Author Response
Point 1: The title of the MS is misleading as authors did not present data on lakes but only analyses of the variability of climatic factors which are presumably will affect study lakes. I expected that authors also will use data collected on lakes (water temperature or other monitoring data) to find correlations between climatic factors and lake ecosystem responses. You may see two papers not cited in the text which deal both with climatic factors and real lakes responses. I strongly encourage authors to find observation data on lakes or to use satellite data to estimate lake surface temperature and preform correlation analyses between climatic factors and lakes responses (at least surface water temperature that can be estimated from satellite data). If authors will find data on the water temperatures profiles and correlate the depth of the thermocline or some biological characteristics with climatic faсtors the manuscript will be excellent.
Response 3: Thank you for your correction, our topic is too large, we changed the title to "Changes in meteorological elements and its impacts on Yunnan Plateau lakes". our study has limitations, such as The teacher said that we only analyzed the meteorological elements, but not the response of the lake ecosystem, which is a more valuable study. In addition, the references cited we re-optimized and added better quality articles to argue. We made changes to the conclusion section to add more content to the conclusion as well as to point out the problems mentioned by the teacher in the conclusion.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Round 2
Reviewer 1 Report
It can be accsepted.
Author Response
Point 1: Are all the cited references relevant to the research?
Response 1: We double-checked the references and changed some of the literature that had very low relevance.
Point 2: Are the results clearly presented?
Response 2: We have adjusted the conclusion section and added or subtracted some unclear expressions.
Point 3: English language and style.
Response 3: We asked our English teachers to check and revise the sentences.
Author Response File: 
Author Response.docx
Reviewer 3 Report
Line 3. "temperatures of these plateau lakes have increased" should be changed to "air temperature................". The temperature of the lake is always refered to water temperature. As`authors did not measure water temperature but study weather parameters they should avoid misleading statements.
Lines 288-301 - I wonder what is the salinity of study lakes? If these lakes are saline the described effects can have great impact on lakes ecosystems.
Lines 326-350 It was calculated here https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00343-018-7329-9 (see page 11 of the paper) that 1oC increase in air temperature would result in the 0.73oC water temperature increase in the epilimnion. Obeserved in this paper 0.2oC air temeprature increaee per decade would result in the 0.15oC surface water temperature increase which is probably not significant. Most probably wind speed and water balance will be more important factors of lakes change then air temperature (especially if lakes are saline). Please consider existing literature on the effect of climatic factors on lakes to probably rank your factors.
Author Response
Point 1: Line 3. "temperatures of these plateau lakes have increased" should be changed to "air temperature................". The temperature of the lake is always refered to water temperature. As`authors did not measure water temperature but study weather parameters they should avoid misleading statements.
Response 1: Thank you for reminding us that in most places in the text we have directly written temperature, which is indeed incorrect and not in line with the actual situation, we have corrected all the places in the text that need to be changed.
Point 2: Lines 288-301 - I wonder what is the salinity of study lakes? If these lakes are saline the described effects can have great impact on lakes ecosystems.
Response 2: Teacher These plateau lakes in Yunnan are freshwater lakes, and we have reviewed the relevant literature for the region and have not found accurate salinity data for the lakes, nor are there salinity measurements in the lake observations we have compiled. We looked up papers, which mention the lakes in the region as freshwater lakes, and the papers are as follows：
1 Health Evaluation of Shallow Lake Aquatic Ecosystem in Yunnan Plateau Based on Entropy Method.(DOI:10.13198/j.issn.1001-6929.2020.05.31).
2 The Grain Size Distribution Characteristics of Surface Sediments from Plateau Lakes in Yunnan Province and Their Environmental Significances(DOI:10.14027/j.cnki.cjxb.2017.03.008).
3 Analysis and Guaranteeing Countermeasures for Water Environment Security of Chinese Freshwater Lakes(DOI:10.13209/j.0479-8023.2009.126).
4 Existing State and Evolvement Analysis of the Chinese Lake Water Resources.
5 Diversity and Phylogenetic Analysis of Bdellovibrio-like Organisms in Fresh Water in Yun-Gui Region(DOI:10.19367/j.cnki.1000-2707.2014.05.003).
6 Problems and Countermeasures in China’s Ecological Civilization Construction——A Case Study of Pollution and Control of Fresh Water Lakes in Yunnan Province(DOI:10.16397/j.cnki.1671-1165.2008.03.014).
Point 3:Lines 326-350 It was calculated here https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00343-018-7329-9 (see page 11 of the paper) that 1oC increase in air temperature would result in the 0.73oC water temperature increase in the epilimnion. Obeserved in this paper 0.2oC air temeprature increaee per decade would result in the 0.15oC surface water temperature increase which is probably not significant. Most probably wind speed and water balance will be more important factors of lakes change then air temperature (especially if lakes are saline). Please consider existing literature on the effect of climatic factors on lakes to probably rank your factors.
Response 3: Thank you, teacher, you mentioned to consider the impact of climate factors on the lake, in order to possibly rank the factors, here we have not finished sorting out the measured water temperature data of all the lakes at this stage, the data of individual lakes are still being searched, in the next stage we will correlate the lake water temperature data with the climate factors, as you mentioned, the change of temperature will affect the water temperature of the lake, but more on the surface layer As you mentioned, changes in temperature affect the water temperature of the lake, but more on the surface layer, and more factors need to be considered for the water temperature of the whole water column, such as wind speed and water balance. This will be the focus of our next study.
Point 4: Are all the cited references relevant to the research?
Response 4: We double-checked the references and changed some of the literature that had very low relevance.
Point 5: Are the results clearly presented?Are the conclusions supported by the results?
Response 5: We have adjusted the conclusion section and added or subtracted some unclear expressions.
特点6：英语语言和风格需要精细/轻微拼写检查
回应6：我们要求英语老师检查和修改句子。
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
