Investigating Road Ice Formation Mechanisms Using Road Weather Information System (RWIS) Observations

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report (Previous Reviewer 1)

Review of “Road Ice Formation Mechanisms By Road Weather Information 2 System (RWIS) Observations” by Jin et al.

By reading the revised manuscript, I think the authors addressed all my comments.  The revised version has been improved and is well organized. Thus, I recommend this manuscript to be published in your Climate.

Author Response

Thank you very much for your review. 

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report (Previous Reviewer 2)

The authors took into account the comments of the reviewed and significantly revised the structure and content of the article. The conclusions have become more reasoned, and the purpose of this work has become clearer. I consider it possible to publish this article openly after minor editorial changes to the text and to bring the formatting of the article in line with the requirements of the Climate journal.

As recommendations, I advise the authors to minimize the number of citations in the results and in the conclusion of the article. The authors need to find technical possibilities to increase the resolution of the drawings.

As a general suggestion, I recommend that the author continue his research on the problem of ice formation on road surfaces by expanding the geography of research, extending the time interval of monitoring and statistical and mathematical modeling.

Author Response

Thank you very much for your review. 

Thanks for Reviewer 2’s comments.

1. In the first round of the review, we were requested to provide a complete picture of current research status of road weather. Therefore, we added many needed references. I have read all of these references and feel they are related to the topic (skin temperature, air temperature, pavement temperature, relation to clouds, UHI affect temperature, snow surface temperature and radiative budget, etc).

Nevertheless, after considering Reviewer 2’s new suggestion in 2^nd round, we made the following changed on references:

1. Remove a few redundant references

ARC 2014

Jin and Shepherd 2008

Jin 2004

Oke 1982

1. Corrected reference: Fowler et al. 2022

1. Added new reference

Dai, Yongjiu, Wei Shangguan, Nan Wei, Qinchuan Xin, Hua Yuan, Shupeng Zhang, Shaofeng Liu, Xingjie Lu, Dagang Wang, and Fapeng Yan,  2019: A review of the global soil property maps for Earth system models. SOIL, 5, 137–158, 2019 https://doi.org/10.5194/soil-5-137-2019

to show that road and its underlying modified soil layer are not included in any land model.

2. Figure quality

When journal Climate put the figures into publication, their professional software would improve the figure quality. We also provided all pdf plot.

We will work closely with the journal to ensure the quality of figure are good. 

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report (New Reviewer)

Please see the attached file.

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

The manuscript would benefit from a thorough check of grammar and language

Author Response

Thank you very much for your review. 

Please see the point-to-point response in the attached "REsponse to Reviewer 3.doc" file. 

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 3 Report (New Reviewer)

Please see the attached file

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

I think that the manuscript would benefit from an English language check

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

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

Review of “Road Ice Formation Mechanisms By Road Weather Information 2 System (RWIS) Observations” by Jin et al.

In this manuscript, the authors addressed road ice formation and mechanisms with use of the multi-year Road Weather Information System (RWIS) sub-hourly measurements, and presented the observed features related to local domain knowledge and various weather physical processes.  I find the subject matter of this manuscript is certainly relevant, provides some interesting results. I would like to recommend it for publication in the Climate after the revision of following comments.

Specific comments:

1). 2-m air temperatures (T2m) from the numerical weather prediction (NWP) models (e.g., NAM) or from the conventional weather stations usually includes impacts of both vegetated and non-vegetated parts, while highways (road pavement) are usually considered as non-vegetated areas. Any considerations or approaches when the authors re-produced the pavement 2-m air temperatures with the 2-m air temperatures from the NWP models or conventional weather stations.

2).  Eq. (1 (Line 120) needs to include snowpack term (energy available for melting), although the authors mentioned snow/ice impacts in many times in the text.  Moreover, the heat flux advected from rain/snow to the surface due to their temperature difference would also be better to include if possible.

3) It is worth using the multi-year data sets to analyze the relationship between pavement temperature and 2-m air temperature (T2m). However, 2-m air temperature is usually quite different from the surface skin temperature or the pavement temperature under various boundary conditions (stable or unstable conditions). In other words, the surface skin temperature or the pavement temperature is determined not only by 2-m air temperature, but also by the boundary conditions.  For example, T2m in the NWP models is usually derived from both the upper model level temperature (>> 2 meters) and the surface skin temperature. The difference between T2m and surface skin temperature or the upper model level temperature largely depends on the boundary conditions.  Thus, the statistical analysis would not be able to explain these issues.

4) Due to the reason mentioned above, I am wondering if the authors thought about any possibility to use a physics parameterization approach to represent the pavement temperature with the surface energy budget Eq. (1)?

Minor comments:

1). Line 503: “Subsurface temperature measured by RWIS in highways is not a soil moisture.”.  What does it mean?

2). The quality of figures needs to improve. Several figures are difficult to see clearly.

3)  I do not find the impact of precipitation type in the text.  Did the authors consider it, especially frozen precipitation?

4) What’s the forecast length (hours) the authors considered to predict with the road ice physical model?

Reviewer 2 Report

The urgency of the problem of icing of road surfaces is beyond doubt. Equally obvious is the lack of coverage of this problem in scientific publications and the lack of research on the impact of roadside landscapes on the dynamics of ice formation on roads. The authors of the manuscript are certainly right about this. The conditions of road glaciations described in the work, analytical graphics, aroused the reviewer's genuine interest. But the lack of proper systematization and generalization of these observations is disappointing. In the course of presenting the results of the analysis of the RWIS network data and in conclusion, the authors only make assumptions about the factors of ice and determine the directions for further research on the processes of icing roads.

1. The article submitted for review is descriptive and staged. Therefore, in order to recommend this work for publication, it is necessary to rework it, both in structure, content and design.

1.1. In the structure of this article, it is advisable to separate the heading "The study of the problem". It is necessary to transfer citations from the Introduction to this section and give a brief description of the state of research on icing processes in the world over the past 5-10 years. This will allow the authors to substantiate the novelty of the presented research.

1.2. In the introduction, clearly define the objectives of the research and the purpose of the open publication of the material in the journal Climate. After reading the manuscript in its current form, the reviewer got the impression that the purpose of the authors was to share with readers the experience of processing RWIS network data. This is not enough for a scientific article.

1.3. It is important to include a paragraph in section 2 devoted to the terms and concepts used by the authors. In order not to describe further, in the course of presenting the results, what the authors mean by the terms: ice, thawed and re-frozen snow, "black ice", etc.

1.4. It is necessary to shorten the text. First of all, by eliminating the discussion of secondary issues, information of an actual advertising nature, and repetitions. For example, lines 51-64, 195-224, 240-244.

1.5. At the authors' choice, it is possible to reduce the number of described objects. For typical conditions of ice formation on roads, it is enough to mention the object and the characteristics of the factors affecting the ice. Without presenting a graphic and a detailed description of the icing conditions. Due to this, abnormal conditions can be considered in more detail: urban landscape; bridge crossings; highlands.

1.6. When approximating dependencies by trends, the reliability of the relationships should be indicated (ratio of determination - R2). Lines: 451, 452.

2. In general, the layout of the article was prepared carelessly. These are incomplete pages: 3, 7, 10, 11, 13, 15, 16. The drawings with captions are aligned differently. The authors should correct these shortcomings.

2.1. In accordance with the reviewer's comments 1.4 and 1.5, it is necessary to reduce the number of drawings. At the same time, add a drawing on which to highlight the research area and show the location of the described objects.

2.2. All drawings must be of the same format: font, size, resolution. It needs to be fixed. Figures 11 and 12 are of poor quality. It needs to be fixed.

3. As a recommendation from the reviewer (optional)

3.1. In conclusion, it is desirable to justify and describe the classification of ice on the roads according to the leading natural factor. For example: daily, seasonal, weather anomalies.

3.2. It would be logical to eventually create a schematic model of ice with a designation of the importance of factors of ice formation on roads.