Spatial Non-Uniformity of Surface Temperature of the Dead Sea and Adjacent Land Areas
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
I very much enjoyed reading the article. I have read through the other reviewer comments and the edits made to the manuscript, and feel this manuscript is ready for publication. I believe the additional dataset, references, and additions to the Discussions section have greatly improved this manuscript, and present a more sound approach to derive their conclusions.
Minor Comments:
Line 15: Remove comma after “Dead Sea”
Line 33: Remove the second “at”
Lines 38-42: The sentence is quite long, I would suggest breaking this into multiple sentences to help the reader.
Line 144: Awkward phrasing with “over” and “over”
Line 461: Remove or use a synonym for the repetition of the phrase “spatial non-uniformity”. This was common throughout the manuscript. I would suggest using a synonym for this phrase sporadically throughout the entire manuscript, not just line 461, to reduce the repetition of this phrase in the same sentence.
Author Response
Please see the attachments.
Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
The paper “Spatial non-uniformity of surface temperature of the Dead Sea and adjacent land areas presents the application of MODIS sea surface temperature from Aqua and Terra to the Dead Sea. The primary conclusion is that the distribution of sea surface temperature is heterogenous between the Eastern and Western Basins. Data over the Eastern Part exceeded the Western by 5 degrees. Another interesting part of the paper was the examination of SST trends in the Dead Sea over the 14 year study period. Comparisons were made with the WRF model which showed no nonuniformity in temperature.
Strengths: This paper is overall well written and makes a very strong contribution to the application of sea surface temperature to an inland sea and or lake. The authors do an excellent job of bringing in land temperatures to examine whether the nonuniformity is due to the formation of winds and land-sea temperature differences. The comparison with the WRF model also is an important contribution, in that it proves possible mechanisms for improving modeling in the area of inland seas and/or lakes. Only summertime data was used, because during winter months cloud cover becomes an issue. Can the authors comment more on the known “seasonal” cycle in the Dead Sea? One would assume that the seasonal cycle is minimized in the Dead Sea.
Major Comments: My only major comment is that the introduction could perhaps include more review of the application of SSTs to Lakes, The authors should mention other SST data sets that could be beneficial for such studies. For example, data from the Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) would provide high resolution data at even higher spatial resolution. I do not recommend the authors redo anything, as the results are compelling as I, but simply mention these other data sets. One reference that could be added is:
Evaluation of the Multi-Scale Ultra-High Resolution (MUR) Analysis of Lake Surface Temperature, E. Crosman, Vazquez-Cuervo, 2017, T. M. Chin 9, (7), doi: 10.3390/rs9070723.
Minor comments:
Ine 20: change “east” and “west” to “eastern” and “western”
Line 36: please use standard PSU units for salinity.
The degree symbol seems a bit off. Would use °C.
I would also add degree symbol to “longitude and latitudes”.
Eg: Instead of 35N 35°N.
Author Response
Please see the attachments.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 3 Report
none
Author Response
Please see the attachments.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
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.
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
This study uses the MODIS LST product to assess the spatial heterogeneity over the Dead Sea and adjacent areas. Results show significant differences between areas (east-middle-west) depending on the time of the day (daytime vs nightime). These findings may be valuable for future improvements of regional models, which are not capable of capturing such a spatial variability.
The manuscript can be potentially published in Remote Sensing, but in my opinion it requires some improviments and modifications before publication. Overall, I think the analysis done is more powerful than what is actually reported in the manuscript. Also, some sentences require an English revision.
GENERAL COMMENTS:
1) Imagery used should be better described. It is not clear which MODIS product was used (swath, 8-day, monthly, etc.). In this sense, I think imagery used should be better justified. It is not clear why authors are using a 5-km product when products at 1-km are also available. This is specially important because according to Fig. 1 a spatial resolution of 5-km may be to coarse to capture variations within the Dead Sea. Also, it would be very valuable to use high resolution imagery (Landsat-8, 100m) to support the analysis with MODIS.
2) Temporal series with MODIS (around 17 years) could be better exploited to assess trends in temperature at different seasons.
3) If possible (it could be also a future work), it would be very illustrative to compare outputs of the regional model when MODIS LST is used as input (according to Fig. 8 it seems that the WRF model assumes a uniform distribution of water surface temperature).
SPECIFIC COMMENTS
-I suggest to change the title to: "Spatial non-uniformity of sea and adjacent land surface temperatures over the Dead Sea"
-The title of section 3.3 is too long.
-I think section 3.4 fits better in a "Discussion" section (which is not included in the current version of the manuscript).
-Some sentences still require an English revision.
Author Response
Please see the attachments.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
This manuscript describes the application of satellite derived SST and LST estimates to the Dead Sea. The manuscript is not really focused on remote sensing, but the analysis and interpretation of one remote sensing product, which is neither validated nor described in detail. It is well known that satellites do not measure temperature, but radiative tranfer, from which temperatures can be estimated. The authors have not described how this estimate was achieved other than referencing the product line C6. How does the salt content of the Dead Sea change the radiative transfer and thus the SST? The authors quote a geochemisrty paper to indicate the vastly different absorbtion of Dead Sea water, but then ignore it in the following analysis. Also, no validation data is presented, e.g. weather stations, or any type of ground truthing. Wind data is not available as the authors indicate, but temperature data or profiles must exists for selected locations.
The authors also restrict the analysis to one set of SST by Aqua and Terra, not even discussing additional options. It is well established that SST estimates from radiometers need careful calibration for individual lakes, hence, the Dead Sea is not an exception to that.
The analysis of the data is clear and justified. The findings are interesting and potentially new. The authors have published at least two manuscripts closely related to this one.
Overall, the manuscript does not contain much advances in remote sensing, but is rather an application of remote sensing data to a geographical, limnological or climate study. The use of the remote sensing observation is at a very basic level with no additional effort to understand the products and its uncertainties.
I therefore recommend to reject this manuscript and suggest to submit it to a more target oriented journal.
Author Response
Please see the attachments.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Round 2
Reviewer 1 Report
The authors addressed most of my previous comments. Although some answers were not very specific, I think this new version of the manuscript can be published in Remote Sensing.
Reviewer 2 Report
The authors have explained that a validation of the radiometric measurements to temperature transformation is not needed as they only compare relative temperature across the Dead Sea. If that is the case, the temperature should not even be used, but the raw measurements. Considering the salinity and the differences in wave scatter and wind speed, a linear relationship between radiometric data and temperature is NOT likely, therefore, even a relative comparison must be validated. Quoting Wan 2014 as the source of validation of the LST product is fine, but this validation does not apply to every land cover and must be reconsidered. The product is validated, but for a specific study area such as the Dead Sea, a rigorous validation must be expected.
Due to the lack of validation and process understanding of how the remote sensing product was derived and is applicable to the study site, I recommend to reject the manuscript.
