Interannual and Monthly Variability of Typical Inland Lakes on the Tibetan Plateau Located in Three Different Climatic Zones
, Ling Bai 1,2,3, Weiqiang Ma 1,4,5,6,*, Wei Hu 1,2, Zhipeng Xie 1,5, Rongmingzhu Su 1,2, Binbin Wang 1,5 and Yaoming Ma 1,2,4,5,6,7Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
Understanding the changes of lake water volume in Tibetan Plateau is crucial to the study the lake-atmosphere interactions and their effects on climate change. This manuscript (#ID: remotesensing-1916490) investigated the interannal changes and monthly changes of lake area, water level and water volume in three inland lakes on the Tibetan Plateau. This study provided valuable information about the processes and mechanisms of how climate change impacted lakes in the third pole region. I think this manuscript is overall well organized, the research results are clear stated. I have some specific comments that may help the authors to improve the manuscript before publication.
Major concerns:
1. The mechanisms of why the inter-annual variations of lakes in different climatic zones are markedly different were not clearly illustrated in the paper. The authors only list the monthly precipitation and their relative changes of lake water volume from 2019 to 2021 in the three lakes (Figure 9). This work did not quantify the relationships between the long-term variations of lake area, lake water volume and the climatic variables quantitatively. Meanwhile, in addition to precipitation, other factors, such as the air temperature, evaporation could also be related to the variations of lake area and lake water volume.
2. The manuscript lacks of an individual detailed discussions part, which is not sufficient to explain the results and mechanisms well in the discussions. I suggest the authors to strength this part if possible.
Minor comments:
1. Line 26: “the effects these changes could ...”, I suggest to revise this sentence to make it more clear and concise.
2. The forms of the reference citations were not followed the rules of the Remote Sensing journal. The citations of references must be numbered in order of appearance in the text following the style of Remote Sensing. I suggested the authors to revise the citation forms through the paper.
3. Lines 58-74: The two paragraphs are correlated, I suggest to combine the two paragraphs into one paragraph.
4. There are many format errors in the manuscript, please double check it before submission. For example, Line 67 and 73: “km3” should be “km3”, this superscript problems existed in many other places in the manuscript. Please check it through the entire manuscript.
5. Line 139: The font size in the Figure 1 looks like too small to be clear. I suggest to revise the font size in the labels and legends of the figure to make it clearer. Besides, the font color of the Figure 1(a) also needs to be revised.
6. How to process the Sentinel-1 data and extract the water area in this study? I suggest to provide more details of the related descriptions of the method of processing the SAR data in Method part of the Manuscript.
7. Line 286: “4.746km2/a”, you need to leave a blank space between a number and its unit. Besides, the superscript problem also existed. Please checked it in many other places in the manuscript.
8. Line 292-293: the authors stated: ”The three groups of primary and twin lakes have similar trends, suggesting they are connected by groundwater”. In my opinion, this conclusion should be supported by the isotopic measurements or other direct evidences.
9. Line 295: “Figure3”, please leave a blank space before “3”. The legends in the Figure 3 were used the abbreviation forms, which made the readers confused about their meanings. I suggested to use the full names or explain them in the caption of the figure.
10. Line 325: similar with the Figure 3, I suggest to provide the full names of the lakes in the legends rather than the abbreviation forms. Besides, I am curious about the abruptly decrease of lake levels from 2020 to 2021 in the right panels of the figure.
11. Line 344: I suggest to retain two decimals for the R2.
Author Response
Dear revier,
Thank you for your valuable comments, it is very important for us to improve the study. The responses to comments are in the attachment, please check it.
Best wishes!
Sincerely,
Weiyao Ma
Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
Please see review and comments/recommendations in the attached document.
Comments for author File: Comments.pdf
Author Response
Dear reviewer,
Thank you for your valuable comments, it is very important for us to improve the study. The responses to comments are in the attachment, please check it.
Best wishes!
Sincerely,
Weiyao Ma
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Round 2
Reviewer 1 Report
The authors have addressed most of my concerns and added the mechanism analysis of interannual variability in different climatic zone lakes. Through carring out the correlation analysis between climatic variables and lake area, the logic of the representations in the manuscript was improved substantially. I would like to recommend to accept this manuscript before made some minor revisions. Below are some minor suggestions for the authors.
(1) The minor point 2: “References should be numbered in order of appearance and indicated by a numeral or numerals in square brackets—e.g., [1] or [2,3], or [4–6].”
(2) The minor point 3: The Lines 61-77, the two paragraphs can be merged.
(3) Line 170, lacks a comma before “(b)”.
(4) Lines 384-385, lacks blank spaces in some places. For example, “Figure3”. These problems also existed in other places, such as Line 521, Line 531, and Line 538.
(5) Please pay attention to the font sizes and font names in figures. I found the font names and font sizes in certain figures were not consistent with the other figures. For example, the font size in the labels of the Figures 8 to Figures 13 were too large. I suggest the authors to check these figures and use a normal font size.
(6) Typically, the Discussion part is listed before the Conclusion part.
Author Response
Dear reviewr,
Thank you for your second valuable review, it is very important for us to improve the manuscript. The responses to comments are in the attachment, please check it.
Best wishes!
Sincerely,
Weiyao Ma
Author Response File: 
Author Response.docx
Reviewer 2 Report
The authors have managed to put together the graphs I was hoping to see, and have decribed their changes to the paper in sufficient detail. Great work! Now the paper has the context for reader's to understand the lake selection process, climatic zone definitions, and what future research is likely to be undertaken using this approach. I'm happy for this to be be published in current form :)
Author Response
Dear reviewer,
It is a great honor that our revised manuscript can be recognized by you. We are very glad that the figures and analysis added to the manuscript can answer your suggestions. Your positive comments have greatly improved the article. Hopping the article can be published soon.
Once again, we would like to thank you again for taking times to review our manuscript and your warm work earnestly.
Sincerely,
Weiyao Ma
