Fixed-Wing UAV Flight Operation under Harsh Weather Conditions: A Case Study in Livingston Island Glaciers, Antarctica

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report (Previous Reviewer 1)

This is the second time I have reviewed this work. After carefully reading the manuscript, as well as the responses, to my comments that were provided to me, I must conclude the following:

1. the paper has been revised substantially, making it much better than the original version.

2. the authors have taken into account all my comments and incorporated this into the revised version of the paper.

3. For example, in the new version of the work, the legibility of Figure 4, which now looks as if it were a scan, should be improved. The entire work should be reviewed to avoid such situations.

The work done by authors is greatly appreciated.

Author Response

Thank you once again for your suggestions. We very much appreciate your comments regarding our first revised version, in which, as you mention, we put much effort into applying your suggestions to improve the manuscript.

Below you can find (in blue) some minor answers/comments to your own comments (in black).

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report (Previous Reviewer 2)

Whole manuscript must be reviewed in terms of grammar and readability (‘2.3. Sotware tools’).

The reference should be given for figure 1.

What do the U and F in Figure 3 describe?

The quality of figure 4 is weak.

There are non-English words in figure 9. Does the manuscript need figure 9?

There is no green column in table 6.

Do you have a chance to replace photo in figure 6 with one taken at a better angle?

Please check whole figures and tables.

‘Figure. 10. Controller running the Trimble Access software.’

‘Figure 10. Controller running the Trimble Access software.’

The reference should be given for figure 12.

Please revised the figure 16.

Parts that are not needed should be discarded from figure.

I still see that the contribution of this article to the literature is not clearly emphasized. In summary, could you add the contributions of your study to the literature as list in the introduction section of the article?

In the article, the semantic integrity between the sentences should be checked. I see that some sentences in paper did not complete each other semantically.

I think the novelty of the study is not adequately explained.

Author Response

Thank you very much for your further suggestions to improve our manuscript. We are sorry that still some aspects were still unclear (or did not fully satisfy you) in our revised version. Once again, all of your comments and suggestions have been taken into account in our new revised version, as described below. We have kept your comments in black and included our answers/comments in blue.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report (Previous Reviewer 2)

can be published after grammer and syllable control.

Author Response

We did a new in-depth grammar and style review of the manusctript, which was the only suggestion by the reviewer.

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

Although the work appears to be very interesting, in many places its descriptions are not timely and misleading. I agree that conducting drone surveys in the Antarctic is very difficult due to the very harsh weather conditions, particularly in the South Shetland region, and for this reason, any further work that tries to address this problem is valuable, but the one I reviewed needs a lot of tweaking to reach a certain required level for a Remote Sensing journal. My concerns are detailed below

Already the first sentence in the abstract is questionable. The authors ask a question: “What type of drone is most suitable for surveying the polar glaciers of Antarctica?”, and in chapter 4 they answer affirmatively as follows: “the first hypothesis raised, in relation with the type of unmanned aerial system most suitable for flying in the study area, was confirmed” but in the whole paper I have not found, not a single result that supports their thesis. In my opinion, such a claim would require the use of at least several drones (e.g., those commonly used in the Antarctic produced by e.g., DJI), of different sizes, using them under different conditions and then statistically analysing the results. This is what I do not find in this work.

Moreover, the introduction needs to be substantially revised as it is not up-to-date and, worst of all, may mislead readers e.g.

The second paragraph suggestively points out that there are no such works that use the fixed-wing UAV is rare in Antarctica and there is any word about the previous success obtained by other teams with use of fixed-wing UAV i.e.

Application of UAV BVLOS remote sensing data for multi-faceted analysis of Antarctic ecosystem by A Zmarz, M Rodzewicz, M Dąbski, I Karsznia, M Koncak-Abshire, ... Remote Sensing of Environment 217, 375-388

This should be improved.

In line 36 the authors claimed: “and were not focused on the modelling of the glacier surface”, which is not true, as for example

The Influence of Shadow Effects on the Spectral Characteristics of Glacial Meltwater by KA Wójcik-Długoborska, RJ Bialik Remote Sensing 13 (1), 36

in only one paper presented results for 6 glaciers, which were obtained using DJI Inspire 2 (multirotor). The authors in this paper made raids from a height of 500 m and the area size reached 1.5 km2. This should be changed.

With reference to the above comment, what the authors wrote in lines 52/53 is also questionable, as today battery life is not an issue, as one mission, e.g., using PIX4D software, can be performed on multiple battery packs that are changed during the mission. This all needs to be clarified and detailed, as it is simply wrong.

The weakest part of the work is the results section, in particular section 3.1. In my opinion, this section is the conclusions, because I do not see any results there. However, even if one treats this chapter as conclusions, it scores points:

1. have not been proven in the work.

2. it is not stated in any case what the area of the raid was.

3. this work does not prove how atmospheric conditions affect the material of the drone.

4. as above. No results proving this record.

5. as above. No results to support this conclusion.

6. No information on mission coverage with photos.

Finally, a review of the literature cannot be limited to the claim that a great deal has been described in the work of Pina and Vieira [17]. The authors should put in more work because a lot has already been done on this topic but has been omitted in this paper.

I can see some new findings that the authors have gained and from this point of view I think they should be given a chance to improve their manuscript and although I am very critical, I am eager to read the revised version believing that the authors will be able to improve their manuscript.

But please treat my comments as a guideline that represents 30% of the work that it is up to you to do and add 70% from yourself, in particular to ensure that your work complements what has already been achieved with drones in Antarctica.

Author Response

Thank you very much for your many suggestions to improve our manuscript. All of your questions and suggestions have been taken into account in our revised version, as described below. 

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

1-The whole figure in the manuscript are poor graphical quality, and text in these figures cannot be read.

2- The abstract must be included the contribution of the article and real and/or quantitative.

3-Contribuiton of this article to literature must clearly be emphasized in the introduction section. Additionally, I think, the literature survey of this study in introduction is not enough.

4- Did you compare fixed-wing UAV and rotary-wing UAV in terms of weather conditions for glaciers areas?

5- In the results section, the prominent concrete results of the study should be given rather than the general findings.

6- The organization of the subheadings of the study should be reviewed.

7-Which performance characteristics of the UAV under harsh weather conditions were examined?

Author Response

Thank you very much for your many suggestions to improve our manuscript. All of your questions and suggestions have been taken into account in our revised version, as described below. 

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf