Climate Change and Thermal Comfort in Top Tourist Destinations—The Case of Santorini (Greece)
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
The paper assesses the impact of climate change on the tourism industry on a Mediterranean island (Santorini) using the Universal Thermal Climate Index (UTCI). Although the techniques discussed here are not novel the paper does have some potential in its application. Overall, it is lacking clarity and context in several areas. For instance, it is hard to understand how the different global climate models (regional climate models?) and the chosen scenarios fit into a unified framework that was used to estimate thermal conditions. Specifically, what parameterisation was implemented before running the simulations using the different model and how shifts in ideal summer thermal conditions were accounted for.
There is a need to better connect the stated goal of modelling thermal stress under two scenarios (moderate mitigation and no-mitigation) and the discussion in the era of climate change. I think readers and even policy makers will be interested in knowing how the projected outcomes from the different climate models could impact behaviour of tourists. One way to tackle this disconnect is to ask a simple question: Will climate change lead to better weather conditions on the island? This could then establish the likelihood of sustenance of the industry in the future. The authors start on this path in several places, but generally failed to adopt a more critical analysis of their finding.
Abstract
Line 11 remove human.
Line 21 provide the summer months. This is because authors immediately state that “increase in heat stress is expected in September and May”, the assumption of any reader would be that these are not summer months. Right?
Introduction
Line 35 – 36 was there any ‘economic’ and ‘societal’ assessment in this study. Seems very tangential to have this sentence here without any synthesis of the implications to this study.
Line 39 provide the spring and autumn months at the first time of reference for context.
Line 42 Similar to the previous point provide the winter and summer months for context.
Line 52 Give the range of temperature conditions that qualify as good and very good. Otherwise, this just become very subjective and open to misinterpretation.
Line 59 – 60 Excellent findings from this study. Not sure if the succeeding sentence is properly connected. Are the privileges connected to absence or presence of rains summer seasons? Or is it because of an increase or decrease in temperature during summer seasons or other seasons?
Line 72 – 75 Summarise and move to study area or delete.
Line 116 replace ‘in’ with ‘on’.
UTCI model and data configuration
Line 165 – 166 Seems simpler to say that UTCI is based on two models and then proceed to explain what the models are. In its present form this sentence is very confusing.
Furthermore, what are these mechanisms of exchange between the environment and the human body? Why is this suitable for your study compared to the PET index? Readers will be interested in knowing this. The best way to clarify any lingering doubts is to provide the justification when describing the methods.
Line 181 Why is a cumulative distribution function more relevant here compared to a probabilistic distribution function? Again, a sentence clarifying the decisions of the authors could be helpful.
Line 182 You selected 4 models and applied a two-sample t-test to test significant difference among all of them? How does this work from a statistical point of view? Hint “two”. Please could you provide more details?
Line 184 So CDF is based on probabilities?
Line 186 A bin or percentile? Were there any instances, where the authors applied bin and other instances percentile was used?
Line 189 – 190 Really do not understand what the authors are trying to explain here.
Line 192 One will expect that after stating that “The following analysis focuses…” there should be mention of what these analyses are. I am not sure what to make of this section.
Results
Line 229 – 230 A couple of sentences in the method section to explain how the exceedances were determined will be helpful to readers? Especially, when defining the index and explaining Table 1. As is presented, this seems out of the blue. Similarly, what are the “two heat stress thresholds”?
Line 235 Is the no thermal stress range the threshold above which exceedances are determined? If so, it is best to explicitly state so somewhere in the method and perhaps repeat in the results.
Figure 3 This is a very nice graph.
Figure 4 This is a very nice graph.
Line 294 What could the reasons for these observed differences?
Figure 5 Showing whether there is statistical difference between model outputs for the different scenarios will be more interesting to readers. Remove the coloured box from the legend or else it can be mistaken that the box is for only the observed category. Which I am assuming is not the case.
Discussion
Lines 464 – 473 This appears to be a good narrative for this study and probably a better approach to compare the main findings. Most of the preceding text seems like a repetition of the main results.
Line 478 – 479 Authors need to be careful on how they interpret the variability in RCMs. This seems like an overreach to say that variability in the simulations provides more insight. One can argue that this just adds more uncertainty to this assessment.
Line 485 – 486 This is extremely confusing. What is the main point? Who voted? What questionnaires are the authors referring to?
Line 487 – 488 I can not recall seeing this parameterisation in the methods.
Author Response
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Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
The paper deals with climate change and thermal comfort in top tourist destinations - Santorini in Greece.
The paper fits more to Climate journal of mdpi. Sustainability issues are not clearly addressed in this paper.
The paper provides interesting study on the advanced Universal Thermal Climate Index (UTCI) development in Santorini, however do not provides any policy implications.
In addition paper lacks literature review section and discussion of results should be improved to compare results of the study with other similar studies in this field.
Conclusions are too short and not informative.
The input of paper needs to be highlighted. The limits of study need to be identified and future research guidelines how to address these limits are added.
Author Response
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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 3 Report
Please see the attached document for comments.
Comments for author File: Comments.pdf
Author Response
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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 4 Report
I have just two comments:
- The results are general in that an open site is used rather than microclimates tourists have been and are exposed to (coasts, urban locales, etc). Could authors address possible local/micro scale spatial variations that may alter the findings? To what degree are resorts for example modulating an open site analysis?
- mean radiant temperature a key to results. Do you have some verification on its adequacy using your methods for more complicated landscapes (e.g., variable sky view factors in urbanized areas)?
Author Response
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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Round 2
Reviewer 2 Report
The authors have addressed my all comments and revised paper. Now the quality of paper is increased and I do not have anything against publishing this paper in current version.
Author Response
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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 4 Report
I'm happy with the authors' response to my review.
Author Response
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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
