Reply to Lofgren, B.M.: Comment on Hicham Bahi, et al. Effects of Urbanization and Seasonal Cycle on the Surface Urban Heat Island Patterns in the Coastal Growing Cities: ACase Study of Casablanca, Morocco. Remote Sens. 2016, 8, 829

2017 
First, we would like to thank Lofgren [1] for his comments [2]. The aim of our research is toevaluate the effect and the impact of both urbanization and the season cycle on the variation ofthe Surface Urban Heat Island (SUHI) in the Casablanca region, Morocco. The SUHI experiencesa significant emergence in the urban zone of our study area during winter while it experiencesa reciprocal effect during summer. However, some wintry days can differ from this trend andshow a significant cooling effect in the urban core. In our analysis, we notice that there are someclimate conditions that are more conducive to this reciprocal effect of the SUHI, such as cold/low airtemperature and precipitation. For example, in Figure 17, we show the strength of the link betweenthe spatial distribution of precipitation and the Surface Urban Cool Island (SUCI) pattern and howthe urban areas coinciding with the highest precipitation contribute significantly to the enhancementof the SUCI. On the other hand, we mentioned that winter cool/low air temperature values allowthe control of the SUCI. Once the air temperature exceeds the threshold of approximately the meanwinter temperature, we observe a significant emergence of the SUHI while the SUCI occurs in theother case. Figure 5d accentuates this fact and illustrates a weak SUHI due to the important decrease inair temperature compared to the threshold mentioned above. Some research shows that the presenceof low outdoor temperature keeps moisture in the soil as long as possible [3–5] and then contributes incontrolling the cooling effect. Hence, it was concluded that air temperature controls soil moisture andthe response of soil moisture to air temperature is more sensitive than precipitation [3]. Soil moisture isone of the prime environmental variables related to land surface climatology and is directly connectedwith the process of evapotranspiration and I agree with you that it is controlled by the Surface EnergyBalance. However, and as you evoked in your comment, air temperature can be considered as a factoror part of this complex process. In our paper, we did not deeply study this complex process becauseit is not the goal of our work but we have been limited to show the impact of low temperature andsoil moisture on decreasing the SUHI effect. Our statement, accompanied by the citation of Lofgren’spaper [1], has been mentioned in this perspective. Also, our expected results do not depend on thetopic of potential evapotranspiration and its physical drivers in detail.
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