Climate Change-Greenhouse Gas Emissions Analysis and Forecast in Romania
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
I found the paper to be rather simple for a scientific work. The introduction presents some hints related to the importance of the theme. The materials and methods section is very simple as some well known statistics indicators are presented - not properly explained as the notations are not presented and if one does not know statistics, would have been hard to read the formulas.
The results are purely application of statistics analysis in a particular field.
The concluding remarks, especially the bullets recommendations are common sense recommendations and are not based on the results presented in the previous section.
Please define the acronyms before using them - e.g. in the abstract GHG.
Author Response
Dear reviewer,
Please see the attachment.
Thank you very much!
The authors
Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
The work carried out is interesting and the topic is very relevant
Limitations of the proposed methodology are, that it doesn’t asses major strategic changes like increase of sector coupling, electrification of transport sector etc. This is fine and it is highlighted in the conclusions as the researches boundaries.
The following points need to be / could be changed:
- The methodology chapter could be more comprehensive
- The conclusions chapter could be more comprehensive and differentiating. A more detailed description of the strengths and weaknesses of the study and an outlook with recommendations regarding future research would be desirable
- Please proofread English in general, some smaller parts could be polished
- Line 18: It would be good to link the abbreviation GHG once to green house gases in the text
- More keywords could be helpful to increase impact
- Line 31: It would be helpful if you add the scenario that would lead to this drastic increase of the medium temperature – I assume this is the worst case scenario, others estimate an increase of e.g. 2.4 degree Celsius
- Line 37: “will be affected”
- Line 27 – 39: It would be beneficial of you add more references in that section
- Line 43 – 46: The EU has recently decided that it wants to be climate neutral until 2050 (https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_21_3541). Please include the updated goals in that section
- Line 56: “The surface air temperature and temperature” - What “temperature” is meant here, temperature in general?
- In general, sometimes in the text GHG and sometimes “green house gas” is used. It would be good to unify this
- Table 1, row “Long-term low greenhouse gas emission development”, column “Main actions”. It seems that there are footnotes (“vision5”, “analysis6”) left in the text
- Line 208: Which was less than in 2000
- Line 211: I assume 30.8 means tons per capita? Pleas add the unit
- Figure 1: It would be good to add the unit (tons of CO2 equivalent)
- Line 247 – 251. It would be good if you could also refer to the reduction based on the 1990 CO2 emittance as this is the base year that is usually used. E.g. would the EU goal of 55% GHG emission reduction (based on the 1990 values) be achieved according to your predictions?
- Figure 3: It would be good if the numbers would be completely readable / a little larger. Also why is Germany missing and Turkey included?
- Figure 4: “Thousands of tonnes”
- Figure 4 and 5: You could remove the decimal on the y-axis
- Line 301 and 302. In those two values it seems like you are using a dot for both as thousands separator and decimal separator. In general within the document some times a decimal fraction is given and sometimes not. Also sometimes a comma and sometimes a dot is used as decimal separator. Please unify that.
Author Response
Dear reviewer,
Please see the attachment.
Thank you very much!
The authors
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 3 Report
First, the total timeframe for the database used for the estimation and forecasts seems to be short. The data are collected from 2000, and there are no data before 2000. It would be better if the authors could include older data, too. The calculation method is not new. Including machine learning or other IT tools will contribute to the novelty of the research.
In the line 423, the author says that the linear trend analysis is a better fit because R2 = 0.7557unlike R2 = 0.7376, that does not fit to the graphic presentation for exponential analysis above the text. Please, correct this.
Author Response
Dear reviewer,
Please see the attachment.
Thank you very much!
The authors
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 4 Report
This paper addresses the forecast of gas emissions that contributes to climate change. The subject is within the scope of Sustainability, however I have major concerns related to the methodology and quality of the forecasts as addressed below.
Major concerns:
Line 223 - Please add a sentence in the manuscript stating that in Fig. 1 the cumulative data is presented for each country, while only the cumulative average is presented for the European Union – 27 countries.
Lines 304-310. From my perspective, the gap between lower and upper confidence bond in Fig. 5 are too large, which essentially means that any scenario could occur. If the predictions are not conclusive, what is the major contribution of this research? Please, explain it.
Lines 304-310. A critical analysis on how reliable the “forecast tools from excel” are must be added to the manuscript.
Fig. 5 – How authors explain the negative forecast by 2036? Is this realizable?
Fig. 6. – The standard deviations/uncertainty of the forecasts increase with time up to a point in 2034 that are greater than the forecast value. I believe the method chosen for the forecast is, thus, not appropriate.
Minor concerns:
Line 226. It would be interesting to add a paragraph comparing the average emission from the European union with the ones from other countries outside Europe or G20 economies.
Lines 247 – 252. It is not possible to see the data for each country in the y-axis of Fig. 2 due to graph scale issues. I would suggest changing x-axis to every 4 or 5 year, so Fig. 2 can be enlarged. Adding secondary scale in the y-axis might help too.
Fig. 3 – The colourmap scale should be enlarged, should have more divisions, and have fixed initial and final scale values in all figures to make comparisons easier from 2000 to 2050.
Lines 258-259. In this sentence, it is necessary to precise what “things” means and add scientific references to support author’s ideas.
Author Response
Dear reviewer,
Please see the attachment.
Thank you very much!
The authors
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Round 2
Reviewer 1 Report
I thank the authors for the revised version of the paper. Unfortunately not much changed on the methodological approach. I still believe that the analysis conducted in the paper is too simple for extracting some pertinent conclusions related to the theme of the paper.
Author Response
Dear reviewer,
Please see the attachment.
The authors
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 3 Report
I still encourage authors to use long term data and apply modern forecasting technologies available.
Author Response
Dear reviewer,
Please see the attachment.
The authors
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 4 Report
The authors presented an improved paper after revisions, thus it is possible to accept it in the current form.
Author Response
Dear reviewer,
Please see the attachment.
The authors
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
