Coupled LEAP-CMAQ Modeling for Pollution–Carbon Coordination: Spatiotemporal Evolution and Risk Assessment in a Coal Resource Province of China

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Thanks for inviting me to review the manuscript entitled “Research on the Development Evaluation of Pollution Abatement and Carbon Mitigation in Resource-Based Provinces”. This manuscript constructs a multi-model coupled pollution-carbon evaluation framework for a typical coal resource province and achieves long-term scenario simulation. Even though the topic is interesting and the findings are insightful, it suffers from plenty of problems, which need to carefully revise according to the following comments.

The title of the study concludes the main information, but it might not interesting for the readers. Hence, please consider to revise it to “Coupled LEAP-CMAQ Modeling for Pollution-Carbon Coordination: Spatiotemporal Evolution and Risk Assessment in a Coal Resource Province of China”. The abstract summary the main content in this study, but it is too complicate and the authors need to make it more concise by following the structure “background-data and method-the main findings-the contribution and suggestions”. Moreover, keywords are not proper and it should be like “Pollution-carbon synergy, LEAP-CMAQ coupling, Resource-based, Spatiotemporal differentiation, Scenario simulation”.

The overview section should be literature review. And the literature sorts studies by spatial scale and industrial sectors, yet its identified research gap is oversimplified. It only states insufficient provincial prediction research without contrasting existing provincial pollution-carbon papers; it fails to clarify unique theoretical contributions of coupling LEAP and CMAQ for coal-dependent resource provinces, weakening novelty justification. Hence, please add comparative analysis of prior provincial pollution-carbon forecasting literature. Moreover, please elaborate how the multi-model linkage framework fills gaps exclusive to high-carbon coal provinces to strengthen theoretical innovation logic.

The three-layer low-carbon index lacks clear weighting calculation results and rationality explanations. Baseline and Policy Scenarios are defined without quantifiable parameter differences for energy substitution, clean energy subsidies and industrial elimination standards; scenario boundary conditions are ambiguous, reducing simulation reproducibility. Hence, please supplement entropy weight values for all tertiary indicators; list differentiated quantitative policy parameters of scenarios for transparent, replicable simulation settings.

The multi-method combination forms a complete technical chain, but method validation and uncertainty analysis are absent. No sensitivity test for GM(1,1) prediction bandwidth or CMAQ meteorological input errors, weakening result robustness. Therefore, please add uncertainty analysis for core model parameters; conduct sensitivity tests on GM(1,1) smoothing coefficients and CMAQ boundary data to verify the stability of emission and coordination simulation outputs.

The paper sufficiently interprets temporal trends, gravity migration and kernel density distribution, yet cross-city comparative analysis is shallow. It only describes spatial patterns without classifying cities by carbon-pollution synergy types, failing to explain intra-provincial heterogeneous response to dual-carbon policies. Hence, please classify Shanxi’s prefecture-level cities into high/low synergy clusters based on the pollution-carbon synergy index. Besides, please interpret city-specific policy response disparities and localized emission reduction bottlenecks for targeted spatial conclusions.

Discussion briefly highlights innovations without in-depth dialogue with peer studies; limitations are superficial. Policy suggestions are generic, undifferentiated for industrial, residential and transportation emission hotspots in Shanxi. Hence, please   compare results with Yellow River Basin resource province literature to highlight findings. Some studies are helpful, such as 10.15244/pjoes/193384, 10.1057/s41599-026-07568-3. Besides, please design multi-subpolicy simulation schemes in limitations, and propose differentiated targeted policies for industrial hubs and residential high-emission zones in southern Shanxi.

Some minor comments: first, there is no need to strict the title of each chapter, please provide a common name for each section and it will be more suitable; second, for the study area, a map is necessary, and please add it. Moreover, for the variable and data, please add one table to include its name, variable measurement, and data source; third, in table 1, the selection of variable for each index, please add the references in the final column; fourth, there are some typing mistakes, like line 377, and the equations should be typed by mathtype, such as lines 453, 454; fifth, the maps in figure 11 is not clear and please make it clear, as well for figure 12, 13, 15. By the way, can you delete kanji in figure 17, this is English-based paper. Last, the conclusion section should be organized into three subsection, one is conclusions in summary, one is practical implication and theoretical implication; one is limitation and future directions.

Comments on the Quality of English Language

the quality of English language should be improved and mdpi language editing can be considered. 

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Please see the attached comments.

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

This study constructed a multi-dimensional low-carbon development indicator system and assessed low-carbon development levels under baseline and policy scenarios from 2010 to 2050. 

Section 2 Overview seemed to be out of place in a scientific article. There are very long paragraphs, which make it very difficult to read.

Section 3 The Study Area and Research Methods and Section 4 Research Methods should be merged and renamed into the Materials and Methods Section. Please follow the journal guidelines.

A map of the study area (11 cities in Shanxi Province) should be provided in this work, with scale and directions, to provide a better representation of the regions for the readers.

Figure 1 is low-resolution and difficult to read. Please improve the quality of the figures. 

Same issue for Figure 7 and Figure 11.

Figure 17 shows captions in Chinese characters which should be revised to English only in this work.

This work is poorly written with many long paragraphs (ex. Some paragraphs are 1-page long).

The objective and novelty of this work are unclear, and the figures have low resolution. 

It is obvious that air pollution and carbon emissions are closely related, and mitigation strategies are usually targeting two goals with one stone, as demonstrated in previous literatures. Can the authors justify the novelty of this work?

Also, did the authors explored the use of renewable energy in their model and modelled the scenarios with the use of solar and wind energy instead of burning coal in the Shanxi province? 

It is known that Shanxi province is very rich in the coal resources. How can we ensure a smooth transition from coal to renewable energy in this province?

Please elaborate and provide an explanation for the above comments.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

well done, thanks!

Author Response

Comment 1. well done, thanks!

Response: Thank you for your recognition of our first‑round revisions. We have further inspected the details throughout the manuscript to eliminate any potential minor mistakes.

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

In the cover letter, the authors explicitly state that they have "supplemented the mathematical formulas for positive and negative indicator standardization before the introduction of the entropy-weight TOPSIS method". While the text surrounding the formulas has been updated, the equations themselves are heavily garbled and corrupted in the manuscript draft.

• Equation (1) and Equation (2) are rendered as unreadable strings (e.g., "x x min x E max x min x maxx(j) x(j)" and "åP In p P w xw").

• Equations (5), (7), and (8) similarly suffer from missing symbols, overlapping text, and structural formatting errors.

Minor Comments and Technical Corrections

1. Persistent Typographical Errors Despite the claim of professional English editing, there are numerous OCR-style typos and spelling errors throughout the text that require urgent correction.

• The acronym for the Community Multiscale Air Quality model is frequently misspelled as "CMAO" instead of CMAQ throughout the manuscript (e.g., in the Abstract, keywords, and text).

• Acronym introductions are occasionally mangled. For example, the Grey Model introduction is written as "the Grey Model (1.1) (GM( ".

• In Section 2.1, the LEAP model is mistakenly expanded as "the Long Gange Energy Alternatives Planning System" instead of "Long-range".

• In the newly added Discussion section, Poland is written with a rogue punctuation mark as "P'oland's Silesia".

2. Formatting and Punctuation

• There are spacing and punctuation glitches, such as "Geographically and Tempo ally Weighted Regression (GTWR" missing letters and closing parentheses, and merged words like "synergistic pollution_carbon mitigation".

• Please review the legend in Figure 12 (formerly Figure 11); while the authors mentioned optimizing it, the formatting in the surrounding text and captions across the document remains inconsistent (e.g., "Figure 11-Figure 12. Spatial Distribution Patterns").

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The resolution of Figure 2 remained to be poor and the text is difficult to see in this figure.

The authors' response to the concerns raised in the previous review report has been sufficient.

Author Response

Comment 1. The resolution of Figure 2 remained to be poor and the text is difficult to see in this figure.

The authors' response to the concerns raised in the previous review report has been sufficient.

Response: Thank you for recognizing our previous revisions. We apologize for the unsatisfactory resolution of Figure 2, which made the embedded text hard to distinguish. We have remade Figure 2 with higher‑resolution source data, increased the font size of labels and annotations within the figure, and exported it at 300 dpi. Now all text elements in Figure 2 can be clearly recognized. The updated Figure 2 is provided in the revised manuscript (Line 345). All changes are highlighted in yellow.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx