Analysis of the Characteristics of Climate Change in the Ecologically Vulnerable Area of the Mu Us Dune Field under the Background of Global Warming

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

This manuscript presents the results of a research in which the authors have used uses the data of temperature, 10 precipitation and the precipitable water vapor (PWV). Also, they’ve used Principal Components Analysis PCA to obtain the contribution rates 145 of the first three feature vectors of average annual temperature, annual precipitation and 146 average annual PWV in the Mu Us dune field.

General comments:

The authors are suggested to present, in a clear way, their research problem and the originality of the methodology used to get to the findings of their work.

What is the performance of PWV ERA5 data? I suggest to see this reference: Remote Sens. 2020, 12, 1817; doi:10.3390/rs12111817

Regional and national situation of study area is needed (It will be better to put merge it with figure 1).

The English of the paper should be significantly improved. I advise the authors to find a proofreader with good written scientific English skills.

The authors are suggested also to avoid the non-scientific style of writing, sentences such as: 

The literature [24] believes.../ All in all, the seasonal.../ In general: In recent years,.../That is to say, the increasing.../At this stage, some scholars..

The description of the research area is very short and poor.

For PWV, I suggest to use "mm" unit (1 kg/m2 = 1 mm H2O).

Specific comments:

Line 47 : change "but" by more formal conjunction "however" or other;

Line 144-145: I think the "average annual precipitation" should be replaced by "average annual PWV";

Line 148: Somewhat odd? Is this the caption of table 2.

Line 155: Delete dot in "Figure. 3a" and check throughout the text for the same issue. 

Line 287: replace "precipitation" by PWV.

Line 361: replace "In order " by "in order"

References

The type of the following references is not defined: [9, 12, 14, 30]

Author Response

请参阅附件。

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

I revised the manuscript entitled “Analysis on the characteristics of climate change in the ecologically vulnerable area of Mu Us dune field under the back-ground of global warming”, which you sent me to review”.

I found this paper interesting and believe that a properly revised version would be of value to other readers of the RS journal. In my opinion, some major issues need to be improved before publication.

I- Paper’s structure should be improved

Overall, the reader would benefit from a more step-by-step description of what was done: there is a tendency to intermix procedure and explanation, which leave the reader wondering what was done and what was not. I propose the following structure

1. Introduction
2. Material and Methods

2.1. Research Area

2.2. China Meteorological Data Service Center

2.3. ECMWF data

2.4 Statistical analysis for climatic processing

The author should explain the procedures to extract both spatial and temporal information. I recommended that the author explain rationality to use the eigenvector to describe the trend.

What is the rationality to analyse the seasons?

2.4 Mapping information

3. Results

3.1 analysis of temperature, precipitation and precipitation???

Line 133 check the title section

3.2. Analysis of time variation characteristics of temperature, precipitation and PWV

3.3. Analysis of the spatial distribution characteristics of temperature, precipitation, and PWV

4. Discussion

Part of the information from the previous section and Conclusion should be moved to this new section.

5. Conclusion

Part of the information should be moved to the new section (Discussion)

II- Improve the discussion

• The authors refer in the paper's introduction “… laid a theoretical foundation for the development of forestry, agriculture and other regional economic construction…” This point should be highlighted in the discussion.

III- Minor Corrections

• The maps should provide the north direction.
• Combine the information from table 1 in figure 1.
• Information from lines 79 to 81 should be accommodated in Introduction.
• Information from lines 92 to 94 should be accommodated in Introduction.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

After re-reading of the manuscript I think that the authors have addressed all my remarks and suggestions. However, I have one last question:

Did you validate the PWV dataset from satellite by observed or measured data?

Reviewer 2 Report

The authors have done a good job of improving the previous version of the manuscript. I recommend the publication in the present form.