We are writing to address some important citation omissions in the recent publication within Mostamandi et al. (2022).
We argue that although the study appears of good quality, several critical citations are missing from this work. Regional coastal geoengineering to modify weather in arid regions has been the subject of several recent but also some much older papers, and therefore this concept has not been newly invented. Some older more generic papers on land use (LU)–atmosphere feedbacks and simulation such as Pielke (2001) and Pitman (2003) have been cited. Of course it is established science that land cover and landscape structure are coupled with atmospheric processes, in the form of complex feedbacks. However more recently, more applied studies on the concept of “deliberate” weather modification through LU change, especially in coastal arid regions, have been published. The following studies presented the impacts of coastal desert land-use change on precipitation: Branch and Wulfmeyer (2019), Becker et al. (2013), and Wulfmeyer et al. (2014). These studies are in the same region, and even utilized the same model as in Mostamandi et al. (2022), that is, WRF. As well as impacts on rainfall, specific processes have been described to characterize and explain the triggers for convection initiation and the atmospheric conditions required for this to happen. Authors should therefore review and discuss these processes within studies on the same topic. These publications are easily discovered online and should be cited. Furthermore, the reader should be able to see what other studies have been conducted on the same topic to provide context. Aside from these publications, this concept has been around since the 1950s and these seminal papers should also be cited: Black and Tarmy (1963) and Black (1963).
The omission of important seminal studies seems to be becoming a common issue. It is vital within incremental sciences to conduct background research, that is, due diligence, to set studies within context, provide more profound scientific background, maintain scientific ethics, and give due recognition to seminal works. Neither of these scenarios are acceptable in the scientific peer review process, and they reduce the credibility of the scientific process. We hope this issue will be addressed through feedback by the authors.
REFERENCES
Becker, K., V. Wulfmeyer, T. Berger, J. Gebel, and W. Münch, 2013: Carbon farming in hot, dry coastal areas: An option for climate change mitigation. Earth Syst. Dyn., 4, 237–251, https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-4-237-2013.
Black, J. F., 1963: Weather control: Use of asphalt coatings to tap solar energy. Science, 139, 226–227, https://doi.org/10.1126/science.139.3551.226.
Black, J. F., and B. L. Tarmy, 1963: The use of asphalt coatings to increase rainfall. J. Appl. Meteor., 2, 557–564, https://doi.org/10.1175/1520-0450(1963)002<0557:TUOACT>2.0.CO;2.
Branch, O., and V. Wulfmeyer, 2019: Deliberate enhancement of rainfall using desert plantations. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA, 116, 18 841–18 847, https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1904754116.
Mostamandi, S., E. Predybaylo, S. Osipov, O. Zolina, S. Gulev, S. Parajuli, and G. Stenchikov, 2022: Sea breeze geoengineering to increase rainfall over the Arabian Red Sea coastal plains. J. Hydrometeor., 23, 3–24, https://doi.org/10.1175/JHM-D-20-0266.1.
Pielke, S., 2001: Influence of the spatial distribution of vegetation and soils on the prediction of cumulus convective rainfall. Rev. Geophys., 39, 151–177, https://doi.org/10.1029/1999RG000072.
Pitman, A. J., 2003: The evolution of, and revolution in, land surface schemes designed for climate models. Int. J. Climatol., 23, 479–510, https://doi.org/10.1002/joc.893.
Wulfmeyer, V., O. Branch, K. Warrach-Sagi, H. S. Bauer, T. Schwitalla, and K. Becker, 2014: The impact of plantations on weather and climate in coastal desert regions. J. Appl. Meteor. Climatol., 53, 1143–1169, https://doi.org/10.1175/JAMC-D-13-0208.1.
