Spatiotemporal Evolution and Prediction of AOT in Coal Resource Cities: A Case Study of Shanxi Province, China

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

 

Pg1, l14-l17: This sentence is confusing like the author said, “This paper explored the temporal spatial variation characteristic of aerosols”, and then “seen 11 typical coal resource-based prefecture-level cities among Shanxi Province as research objects and inverted the aerosol optical thickness (AOD)”.

The abstract is only descriptive, and authors show high/low values of AOD or increasing or decreasing trend during the months. Also, the correlations are positive/negative between different parameters, but the authors did not mention how strong or weak correlations are.

Pg1, l33: please change “temporal evolution” to “temporal variation”

Page2, l57: aerosol optical thickness (AOT) and then replace aerosol optical thickness to AOT in l100 and thereafter.

Pg2,l59-60: please appropriate reference

Pg2, l60-62: please remove this sentence

Pg2, l65: for which field the authors is talking about?

Pg2, l67: please remove the word “data”

Pg2, l69: is there only single study conducted over China?

Pg2, l72-l73: which AOD distribution law?

Pg2, l77: please change “AOD is affected by factors such as” to “AOD is affected by many factors such as”

Pg2, l83:  is it transport component of study area?

Pg2, l89: please mention full abbreviation of NARX.

Pg2, l95: NARX neural network was used to expect the impact of 95 outdoor air pollution?

Pg3, l101: please change “influence” to “influencing”

Pg3, l101-l106: it is a long-running sentence. Please split it into an understandable wording.

Pg4, l124 and l151: please correct the section numbers

Pg4, l125: please remove “characteristics”

Pg4, l127: ground monitoring “networks”

Pg4, l132: please replace “dark blue and dark targets” to dark targets and deep blue”

Pg4, l124-l138: The did not acknowledge the previous studies conducted for MODIS products.

Pg4, 140: “and collect relevant meteorological data” is not correct.

Page5, 148: GDP?

Page5, 148-l150: This sentence is also not correct.

Pg4, l157:please change “Figure 2” to “figure 2”

What are the data availability criteria?

Pg4, l160: “It can be known that air pollution control had achieved certain results, but there were significant differences between region……”. This sentence is also not correct.

Pg5, l169-189: statistical results are only descriptive

Pg5, l199: what are the other aerosol contents?

Pg8, l301: please elaborate “the results obtained were consistent with Li[43]”.

Pg9: Figure 9, axis of the timeseries plots is quite congested.

Pg13, l399:  please change “Shanxi Province was studied” to “Shanxi Province were studied”

The conclusion section is also descriptive and not the quantitative which is the preliminary requirement for a scientific paper.

General comment

for the use of English: please avoid excess use of the word "value" e.g. the minimum/maximum value of AOD etc. Better use: the minimum/maximum AOD.

Use figure or fig throughout the manuscript

 

 

Author Response

Dear reviewer,

      please see the attached document for the response to the revision.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

This research article discusses the temporal and spatial evaluation of aerosol optical depth (AOD) in the atmosphere of 11 cities in a province of China where the coal is widely and regularly used. Validation of satellite AOD values by ground AOD observation is a technique currently used. A neural network model was developed in order to predict the AOD annual and monthly mean series. Model performance was evaluated against ground-measured AOD values. Impact factor analysis was performed, as well. The objective of this article is clear, and the paper is quite well written. The conclusion for the study is supported with the correct figures and tables. My recommendation is to accept this manuscript with minor changes, if the authors address the following questions.

My general questions are:

• why the authors used MODIS data only in odd years 2011, 2013, 2015, 2017 and 2019? Why the even years were not taken into account?
• Monthly means of AOD in Figure 3 for what year were represented? At page 3, lines 190-191, the first sentence needs at least a Reference. Otherwise, Figure 3 should represent the multi-monthly AOD means.

Minor comments:

• Lines 9-11, replace with: As aerosols in the air have a great influence on the health of residents of the coal resource-based cities, these municipalities are confronting to the dilemma of air pollution caused by the increase of suspended particles in the atmosphere and their development process.
• Line 11-12: replace with “Aerosol optical depth could be used to explore the aerosol temporal and spatial variations and to develop accurate prediction models, which is of great…”
• Line 20: replace “was” with “were”
• Lines 29-30: replace “After improving the model by adding the four important factors mentioned before and did several experiments, the predicted results indicated that the error, between predicted mean value and actual mean value from model check aspect, was no more than 0.06.” with “After improving the model by adding the four important factors mentioned before, the error between predicted mean value and actual mean value was no more than 0.06.”
• Lines 36-40: synthesize the paragraph as: “Aerosol is a colloidal dispersion of solid and liquid particles suspended in atmosphere and has dimensions covering about four orders of magnitude, from 1 nm to about hundreds of nm. Urban particulate matter pollution increases the concentration of aerosols and is one of the biggest environmental problems affecting human survival. Therefore, its impact is particularly prominent in areas dominated by the development of coal resources [1].
• Line 86: delete “with the development of deep learning and big data technology,”
• Lines 113-115: delete : “Shanxi's raw coal output has been on an upward trend since 1978, although in 2000 and 2001, due to the adjustment and rectification of the coal industry structure, it has increased in recent years.” It is enough explained in the following lines.
• Line 119: replace “will increase by 20%” with “increased by 20%”
• Line 120 replace “and” with “determining”
• Figure 2 caption: Please, add: “black line represents the mean AOD for the odd years in the period 2011-2019”.
• Lines 175 or 218: about “trend of high”: no monotonic trend and/or slope of the trend was reported as detected by a specific technique in the manuscript, therefore I suggest to authors to avoid using expressions as “trend of high”; replace instead with “higher AOD values were obtained in southern areas, while in northern areas AOD values are lower”. Please check and correct this expression throughout the manuscript.
• Line 223: what authors mean by “low standard of AOD”?
• Line 226: replace “air diffusion” with “air dispersion”
• Line 286: delete “in this chapter”
• Line 294: replace “results of AOD and…” with “between AOD and…”

Author Response

Dear reviewer, please see the attached document for the response to the revision.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Authors have revised the manuscript according to the comments. Therefore, the manuscript can now be accepted for publication.