Multifractal Patterns in 17-Year PM10 Time Series in Athens, Greece
, Aftab Alam 2, Ermioni Petraki 1, Panayiotis Yannakopoulos 3 and Konstantinos Moustris 4
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report (Previous Reviewer 3)
This is the resubmission of the paper I previously reviewed. In the revised paper the authors reasonably addressed the previous suggestions and gave additional explanations which I found to be rational. I believe the obtained results might be interesting for wider scientific community and I recommend the manuscript for publishing.
Some minor corrections related to the technical issues (typing) should be addressed before publishing. Also, the introduction part is too long with many references. Please, use fewer but highly relevant references.
Author Response
POINT TO POINT RESPONSE TO REVIEWERS
We would like to thank both reviewers for reconsidering our manuscript and providing their comments. We appreciate that valuable time is spent.
To assist the reconsideration of our paper we provide two discrete files additional to the whole revision:
- PaperPM10_5_v7_cm.pdf: This pdf (created by pdlatex) shows the corrections & insertions as highlighted text and the deletions as boldface & strikethrough text. This selection was driven by limitations of the Latex use of some preambles producing references and subscript text.
- PaperPM10_5_v7.pdf. This pdf (created by pdlatex) is the final clean paper
Below our response to the comments is given.
We hope that we responded adequately
REVIEWER 1
Comment 1:
This is the resubmission of the paper I previously reviewed. In the revised paper the authors reasonably addressed the previous suggestions and gave additional explanations which I found to be rational. I believe the obtained results might be interesting for wider scientific community and I recommend the manuscript for publishing.
Response:
We thank the reviewer for the kind comments. We also believe that the paper would be useful to other topics apart PM10 concentration variations.
Comment 2:
Some minor corrections related to the technical issues (typing) should be addressed before publishing. Also, the introduction part is too long with many references. Please, use fewer but highly relevant references.
Response:
It is true, that despite having checked the manuscript so many times, some typos still existed. We corrected them.
We made extensive changes in the Introduction part deleting many references,
As mentioned above, corrections & insertions as highlighted text and the deletions as boldface & strikethrough text.
We deleted several references and used those that can not be avoided.
IMPORTANT: The references are produced by BibTEX literature by the commands \cite and \citep. Therefore when a reference is deleted the LaTEX command, rearrages automatically the numbers of the references. For this reason we could not show the differentiations in the previous numbering, because it can not be done.
However we managed a noteworthy reduction. In the previous version we had 59 references in the Introduction and now we have 35.
However, there are some references from other subject topics that are very useful for the discussion part. We consider those as significant to support of our claims and for this reason we left those.
There was a great effort to reduce phrases in the Introduction keeping the written text in combination with the remaining paper. Indeed it was needed. We believe that we had the chance to reconsider everything once again and write a new Introduction that, we believe, is significantly enhanced.
We hope that the reviewer finds our efforts sufficient and that we responded adequately.
REVIEWER 2
Comment 1:
I examined the authors' changes and agree with them.
Response:
We thank the reviewer for the agreement with our efforts.
Reviewer 2 Report (Previous Reviewer 2)
I examined the authors' changes and agree with them.Author Response
POINT TO POINT RESPONSE TO REVIEWERS
We would like to thank both reviewers for reconsidering our manuscript and providing their comments. We appreciate that valuable time is spent.
To assist the reconsideration of our paper we provide two discrete files additional to the whole revision:
- PaperPM10_5_v7_cm.pdf: This pdf (created by pdlatex) shows the corrections & insertions as highlighted text and the deletions as boldface & strikethrough text. This selection was driven by limitations of the Latex use of some preambles producing references and subscript text.
- PaperPM10_5_v7.pdf. This pdf (created by pdlatex) is the final clean paper
Below our response to the comments is given.
We hope that we responded adequately
REVIEWER 1
Comment 1:
This is the resubmission of the paper I previously reviewed. In the revised paper the authors reasonably addressed the previous suggestions and gave additional explanations which I found to be rational. I believe the obtained results might be interesting for wider scientific community and I recommend the manuscript for publishing.
Response:
We thank the reviewer for the kind comments. We also believe that the paper would be useful to other topics apart PM10 concentration variations.
Comment 2:
Some minor corrections related to the technical issues (typing) should be addressed before publishing. Also, the introduction part is too long with many references. Please, use fewer but highly relevant references.
Response:
It is true, that despite having checked the manuscript so many times, some typos still existed. We corrected them.
We made extensive changes in the Introduction part deleting many references,
As mentioned above, corrections & insertions as highlighted text and the deletions as boldface & strikethrough text.
We deleted several references and used those that can not be avoided.
IMPORTANT: The references are produced by BibTEX literature by the commands \cite and \citep. Therefore when a reference is deleted the LaTEX command, rearrages automatically the numbers of the references. For this reason we could not show the differentiations in the previous numbering, because it can not be done.
However we managed a noteworthy reduction. In the previous version we had 59 references in the Introduction and now we have 35.
However, there are some references from other subject topics that are very useful for the discussion part. We consider those as significant to support of our claims and for this reason we left those.
There was a great effort to reduce phrases in the Introduction keeping the written text in combination with the remaining paper. Indeed it was needed. We believe that we had the chance to reconsider everything once again and write a new Introduction that, we believe, is significantly enhanced.
We hope that the reviewer finds our efforts sufficient and that we responded adequately.
REVIEWER 2
Comment 1:
I examined the authors' changes and agree with them.
Response:
We thank the reviewer for the agreement with our efforts.
This manuscript is a resubmission of an earlier submission. The following is a list of the peer review reports and author responses from that submission.
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
1.The reviewer has difficulties to understand the work because it was poorly written. This reviewer also has no idea to improve the current version to be publishable. The authors are encouraged to reorganize the work and resubmit for reconsidering.
2.Many citations used in the manuscript is correct because the author should be shown first, such as [16], [17] and so on.
Reviewer 2 Report
You demonstrate the multifractal nature of the PM10 time series but stop at pointing out the advantages of the methodology over regular techniques and the consequences of using it.
Your study is innovative and interesting.
Reviewer 3 Report
In this study the authors present the time series analysis of PM10 measured at five stations in Athens area, Greece. The multifractal characteristics of PM10 series (a 17-year PM10 time series) were identified by applying a Multifractal Detrended Fluctuation Analysis.
The calculated Generalised and classical Hurst exponents together with f(α) plots for raw and shuffled series are presented. In addition the FWHM and fmax parameters are reported and analyzed. Comparing to the previous published results, the two months’ time period associated to the date 2015-01-08 is identified confirming strong multifractal behavior.
Generally, the paper is interesting because the presented results are related to the specific air pollution –PM10. The PM10 database has already been examined using different mathematical approaches by the same authors, (stochastics, self-organized maps…). In this specific manuscript the authors applied additional multifractal analysis and obtained results that are in line with the previous fundamental findings.
Although there is lack of novelty in this analysis, I still believe that the obtained results might be interesting for the wider community as additional analysis to the previously published work.
However, the manuscript is not carefully prepared since there are many technical issues which must be addressed before publication.
Please find below several suggestions that can be used for improving the manuscript.
Highlights
“2015-01-08 is identified in two recent studies of the team, as well.” This sentence is redundant, already mentioned in abstract
I do not recommend table results to be used as graphical abstract. It would be better to use some of the characteristic f(a) functions and multifractal plot
Several specific comments:
- Line 4: “…as exhibiting strong SOC and fractal…:” Please use SOC full name
From my point of view the manuscript is unnecessary too long: the introduction part can be reduced and the section 2.0.1 should be shortened since the study area and data were used and described in the previous papers in details.
Also, too many references , some of them might be omitted (for example, no need to use all 2-15 references just to explain a negative effects of air pollutants).
Typing errors:
Line 32:”… and animals.[1].” Please delete “.” The same goes for line 167…
Line 37:”… the negative results of air pollution and of particulate matter (PM) in specific [2–15].” Too many references, please try to reduce it.
Line 140:”… a Region Regional Units…” repeating
Line 161:”.. is about 7.0 oC,..” , please use superscript
Line 155:”PM10mean..” , Please add space . The same goes for lines 168, 169, …etc
Line 155:” Five (5)..” , No need to add the number
Line 169: “..The characteristics of the five investigated airs are shown..” Please rewrite this sentence
Table 1: The explanation of the column names should be moved below the table i.e. Alt. – altitude above sea level, D.C. – Data Completeness etc…
The complete section 3.1.1 Application of MFDFA should be carefully examined since there are many typing errors related to the mathematical parameters and symbols (might be due to the conversion process problem of pdf document preparation…).
Line 248: “The multifractal dimension of the subset series f(α) can be obtained from equations (17) and (18).” There are no equations 17 and 18, please correct it.
