Spatiotemporal Features of the Surface Urban Heat Island of Bacău City (Romania) during the Warm Season and Local Trends of LST Imposed by Land Use Changes during the Last 20 Years
, Alexandru-Constantin Corocăescu 1, Claudiu-Ștefănel Crețu 2, Vlad-Alexandru Amihăesei 2,3 and Pavel Ichim 1,*
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsPlease see the attachment
Comments for author File: 
Comments.pdf
Author Response
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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsThis manuscript uses the land surface temperature (LST) dataset from the MODIS satellite products, analyzed the surface urban heat island (SUHI) effect in Bacău City (Romania) over the recent 20 years (2001—2020) during the warm season and evaluate the role of land use in SUHI. The authors found that the central area of the city is 1.5—2 °C (1.0—1.5 °C) warmer than the neighboring rural area at daytime (nighttime). The transition from natural to artificial land use tend to increase the LST during the day, but decrease the LST at night.
While the manuscript provided insight to the UHI effect in Bacău City (Romania), the manuscript lacked novelty in the topic discussed and methods applied and needed to improve on the robustness of the statistical analysis. Thus, I would recommend major revision should been made before this manuscript can be considered for publication in Remote Sensing.
First, the authors mention increasing the LST dataset spatial resolution from the orginal 1km to 100m based on several R functions. However, the authors should consider evaluate the accuracy of such regridding processes. In addition, I would suggest comparing the results on SUHI among the different resolution LST dataset.
Second, while the authors used 20 years (2001—2020) of LST data and presented averaged SUHI intensity in the city, the authors fail to discuss the changes to SUHI spatial distribution and intensity over the years. With the effect of climate change, land use change and other factors, does the center of the SUHI shift spatial? Does the intensity of SUHI show any temporal trend?
Third, the authors used ‘center of the SUHI’ and ‘surrounding rural area’ to discuss the intensity of SUHI, but haven’t clearly defined these two important terms, making the discussion on SUHI intensity ambiguous.
Fourth, for the comparisons discussed in the manuscript, the authors presented the results on the average of the datasets instead of the distribution of the datasets. Thus, I would suggest including the statistical tests to examine if the difference between two distributions are statistically significant.
Some minor comments are listed below.
Line 62, please define ‘medium range cities’
Figure 3 (b)—(c), why panel (b), which is for day, also have curves shown for night? And vice versa in panel (c). In addition, what are ‘day weighted’ and ‘night weighted’ in the legends.
Line 190, please briefly describe the detrending analysis method that is being used.
Line 256, please explain what you mean by ‘we summed up the average LST 1.5 or 2 standard derivations’.
Figure 8—9, please consider adding the standard derivation to each stack.
Author Response
We have attached the response.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 3 Report
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsDear authors,
*I have made many corrections to the pdf, please check the entire article carefully.
*You only summarized the results in the conclusion section, please correct it, make the necessary additions: What did you add in this study, what are your suggestions, what are your plans for your future studies?
*References are not suitable for the template, please correct.
Comments for author File: Comments.pdf
Author Response
We have attached the response.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 4 Report
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsPlease see the attached report
Comments for author File: Comments.pdf
There are some minor errors in grammar and syntax, but overall the language is clear and understandable.
Author Response
We have attached the response.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Round 2
Reviewer 1 Report
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsAll the questions I raised have been modified by the authors carefully, therefore I suggest accepting in present form.
Reviewer 4 Report
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsThe authors addressed all of my comments. Now the paper can be considered for publication
