MLUCM BEP&thinsp;+&thinsp;BEM: an offline one-dimensional multi-layer urban canopy model based on the BEP&thinsp;+&thinsp;BEM scheme

Pappaccogli, Gianluca; Zonato, Andrea; Martilli, Alberto; Buccolieri, Riccardo; Lionello, Piero

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-18-7129-2025

Articles | Volume 18, issue 19

https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-18-7129-2025

© Author(s) 2025. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-18-7129-2025

© Author(s) 2025. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 18, issue 19

Development and technical paper

|

10 Oct 2025

Development and technical paper |

| 10 Oct 2025

MLUCM BEP + BEM: an offline one-dimensional multi-layer urban canopy model based on the BEP + BEM scheme

Gianluca Pappaccogli, Andrea Zonato, Alberto Martilli, Riccardo Buccolieri, and Piero Lionello

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Final revised paper (published on 10 Oct 2025)
Supplement to the final revised paper
Preprint (discussion started on 27 Mar 2025)

Interactive discussion

Status: closed

CEC1:
'Comment on egusphere-2025-219 - No compliance with the policy of the journal', Juan Antonio Añel, 08 Apr 2025

Dear authors,
Unfortunately, after checking your manuscript, it has come to our attention that it does not comply with our "Code and Data Policy".

https://www.geoscientific-model-development.net/policies/code_and_data_policy.html
You have created a repository in Zenodo, but apparently restricted. The Code and Data Availability section in your manuscript reads: "The code of MLUCM BEP+BEM can be accessed at https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.14773142 (Pappaccogli, 2025a). The record is publicly accessible, but files are restricted to users with access. The code is made available for the referees."
We must make clear that as our policy clearly states, all the code and data used to produce a manuscript submitted to our journal, must be published openly, and without restrictions, without possibility to be deleted by the authors. Consequently, the situation with your manuscript is irregular, as it should not have been accepted in Discussions or sent out for review due to the mentioned issues.
Therefore, we ask you to create a new repository, containing all the data (input and output) and code necessary to replicate your submitted manuscript, published openly and without restrictions, and to reply to this comment with its information (link and DOI).
I note that if you do not fix this problem in a prompt manner, we will have to reject your manuscript for publication in our journal.
Juan A. Añel
Geosci. Model Dev. Executive Editor

Citation: https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2025-219-CEC1
- AC1:
  'Reply on CEC1', Gianluca Pappaccogli, 09 Apr 2025
  
  Dear Dr. Añel,
  Thank you for your message and for your attention to our manuscript.
  We would like to clarify that, following our correspondence with the Review File Validation team, we were informed that they would take care of providing the reviewers with access to the restricted Zenodo link. They also confirmed that the procedure was correct and that our submission was in line with the journal’s requirements at that stage.
  In agreement with both the Review File Validation and Editorial Support teams, the code was made available to the referees via a restricted-access Zenodo repository, and the submission was accordingly validated.
  At this stage, however, the authors are not in a position to release the code publicly. The model represents the outcome of ongoing research and development, and we are concerned that a full and unrestricted release might lead to potential misuse or plagiarism by third parties.
  That said, the authors are fully committed to transparency and reproducibility, and we are happy to share the code openly upon the article’s final publication.
  We remain at your disposal for any further clarification and thank you again for your understanding.
  Kind regards
  Gianluca Pappaccogli
  
  Citation: https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2025-219-AC1
  - CEC2: 'Reply on AC1', Juan Antonio Añel, 09 Apr 2025
    
    Dear authors,
    I am sorry that you have been said that not publishing the code in your manuscript was acceptable. I do not know who do it, but they were wrong. Actually, I have reviewed all the communications available in the system about your manuscript, and I have to say that I have not found any communication recorded in it that supports what you state. Maybe they were communications out of the system to private email addresses.
    Anyway, your reply clearly states that not making public the code is your decision, not the result of something imposed to the authors by law. Therefore, we must reject your manuscript for publication in our journal, as we do not publish manuscripts for which the code and data are not published. The journal itself is about publishing models. Also, you have the option to withdraw your manuscript, which I would recommend in this case as the easiest option.
    Juan A. Añel
    Geosci. Model Dev. Executive Editor
    
    Citation: https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2025-219-CEC2
    
    AC2: 'Reply on CEC2', Gianluca Pappaccogli, 10 Apr 2025
    
    Dear Dr. Añel,
    Thank you for your message. I must express my deep disappointment with the way the submission process has been handled at various stages by the journal. The procedure has appeared unclear. Regarding the matter of code sharing, I would like to clarify that all correspondence related to this issue was conducted with K. G. In her email dated 31 January 2025, she explicitly confirmed that our submission process, including the way we handled code sharing, was acceptable. Following her instructions, I submitted the code sharing link to the Review File Validation Office. It is now disconcerting to be told that nothing of this is considered official or traceable within the system. It is therefore extremely frustrating to face a rejection based on what appears to be a failure in internal communication.
    Sincerely,
    
    Gianluca Pappaccogli
    
    Citation: https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2025-219-AC2
    
    AC3: 'Reply on CEC2', Gianluca Pappaccogli, 11 Apr 2025
    
    Dear Editor,
    We, the authors of the manuscript, have discussed and agreed to make the code publicly available, in accordance with the journal's policy.
    In light of this, we would like to kindly ask whether the review process could be resumed from where it was left, once the code repository has been made accessible.
    Thank you very much for your time and consideration.
    Kind regards,
    Gianluca Pappaccogli
    
    Citation: https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2025-219-AC3
    
    CEC3: 'Reply on AC3', Juan Antonio Añel, 14 Apr 2025
    
    Dear authors,
    I can confirm that we can resume the review process if you publish the code. However, I have checked your Zenodo repository again, and it continue to be non public.
    If you publish it, please, reply to this comment making it clear, and with a potential new text for the "Code and Data Availability" section in your manuscript.
    Juan A. Añel
    Geosci. Model Dev. Executive Editor
    
    Citation: https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2025-219-CEC3
    
    AC4: 'Reply on CEC3', Gianluca Pappaccogli, 14 Apr 2025
    
    Dear Editor,
    Thank you very much for your message and for your kind support.
    We would like to inform you that the code repository is now publicly available at the following link: https://zenodo.org/records/14773142
    
    Could you kindly confirm that everything is now in order from your side?
    Additionally, since the manuscript is already online, we would appreciate your guidance on how to update the text in the “Code and Data Availability” section accordingly.
    Thank you again for your attention and support.
    Kind regards,
    Gianluca Pappaccogli
    
    Citation: https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2025-219-AC4
    
    CEC4: 'Reply on AC4', Juan Antonio Añel, 14 Apr 2025
    
    Dear authors,
    Many thanks for sharing the repository. I have checked the code deposited there, and I think we can continue now that it is available and anyone can check it and comment on it, we can continue with the review process. Regarding the modified text for the "Code and Data Availability" section in your manuscript, you can not change it at this stage. If you want, you can reply to this comment with it. Otherwise, if eventually your manuscript is considered for a new round of reviews or accepted for publication, you will have the opportunity to modify such section in a new version to be uploaded.
    Juan A. Añel
    Geosci. Model Dev. Executive Editor
    
    Citation: https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2025-219-CEC4
RC1:
'Comment on egusphere-2025-219', Anonymous Referee #1, 08 May 2025

See attached pdf

Citation: https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2025-219-RC1
- AC5: 'Reply on RC1', Gianluca Pappaccogli, 03 Jul 2025
  
  Please find the replies in the attached file
  
  Citation: https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2025-219-AC5
RC2:
'Comment on egusphere-2025-219', Anonymous Referee #2, 20 May 2025

Please see attached file

Citation: https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2025-219-RC2
- RC3:
  'Reply on RC2', Anonymous Referee #2, 20 May 2025
  
  Did not attach when I clicked submit! Sorry!
  
  Citation: https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2025-219-RC3
  - AC6: 'Reply on RC3', Gianluca Pappaccogli, 03 Jul 2025
    
    Please find the replies in the attached file
    
    Citation: https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2025-219-AC6

Peer review completion

AR: Author's response | RR: Referee report | ED: Editor decision | EF: Editorial file upload

AR by Gianluca Pappaccogli on behalf of the Authors (26 Jun 2025) Author's response Author's tracked changes Manuscript

ED: Referee Nomination & Report Request started (10 Jul 2025) by Patricia Lawston-Parker

RR by Anonymous Referee #1 (10 Jul 2025)

RR by Anonymous Referee #2 (21 Jul 2025)

Suggestions for revision or reasons for rejection

The authors have done quite a lot of work in responding to the reviewers comments from the first round. The manuscript now does a better job of highlighting assumptions that are within this model formulation. I also appreciate the extra care they have done in responding to my comments about clarifying the performance of the energy fluxes.

After carefully reading through this new paper, I still have a few reservations about the presentation of this model. Specifically, this model is being presented to “bridge the mesoscale and microscale phenomena occurring in the planetary boundary layer and within the urban canopy, accounting for exchanges and feedback between different scales and processes” (line 63). Yet, there are critical processes that are missing that make this a tool that would not be useful outside of a very small subset of heavily urbanized regions that lack much vegetation. While those are important (the most heavily urbanized and likely to have the most intense impacts of heat), this model formulation is likely going to be severely biased due to the lack of hydrology and reliance on empirical formulations.

I agree that this model will be useful as either a quick analysis of longterm simulations of modulation of thermal parameters or after substantial model development be able to fill a gap in actionable science for climate adaptation that could be used by decision makers. Unfortunately, at the current state, the latter is not possible despite some language used in the manuscript. My comments are directed to help clarify this point and give a better representation of what this model could provide and where it would be helpful to use.

Comments (all are major):
- As the authors have mentioned in their reviewer comments, a user manual should be created to be ready for publication when this paper is live to ensure that the code is as accessible as possible.

- Do the authors believe that 8 cm is enough hydrologically active soil to be able to model rain gardens? While appropriate for a green roof, specifically an extensive green roof with short shrubbery as is modeled by Zonato et al. 2021, rain gardens usually do not have such a shallow growing media and to not have an impermeable bottom. This could be a difference that is occurring due to terminology, where a rain garden could mean a planter boxes that have an impermeable bottom, but should thus be defined more clearly.

- I believe that the presentation of the results, specifically for sensible and latent heat, are obfuscating the real impact that these model simplifications (e.g. lack of hydrology and reliance on empirical coefficients) are causing. I would ask that the authors re-create Figure 3, but only during daylight hours. This would give a better idea of Sensible and Latent heat flux biases. Both fluxes are more variable during the daytime (latent heat is ~0 during the night most of the time, and sensible heat is slightly negative). This does not need to be in the main body of the text but should be pointed to for a clear representation that model structural development choices are creating.

- The new results, even after the new parameters that the authors have identified, do not introduce much model sensitivity. The improvement of the Baseline simulation compared to the Complex simulation are not as large as the “Results show that the integration of detailed, site-specific information on urban elements such as building geometry and vegetation generally improves the simulation of energy fluxes” on line 461 mentions. Please revise, especially as the changes between comparisons in Table 3 and Taylor diagrams in section 4.3 are not that large.

- Line 473: “Its computational efficiency makes it particularly suited for exploring long-term trends and assessing large-scale mitigation strategies.” Please clarify what mitigation strategies that this model would be helpful in. The model, as is currently stands, would be useful in modulating radiative parameters, but the lack of hydrologic treatment and therefor the increase/decrease of latent heat would make this difficult to use in the widespread application of green infrastructure. To work with green infrastructure, one would need to add hydrology to the land surface model in a more sophisticated way. The authors may consider citing alternatives that would be appropriate for green infrastructure strategies when they clarify this point.

- Finally, the authors mention the computational efficiency as a key selling point for this model. It would help if the authors provided somewhere (could be in a table, could be in an SI figure) differences in computational load that was needed to run this model vs. the other models in this paper. Including runtime, number of CPUs, etc. would help justify the computational efficiency point in this paper.

Referee Report: PDF

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ED: Reconsider after major revisions (29 Jul 2025) by Patricia Lawston-Parker

AR by Gianluca Pappaccogli on behalf of the Authors (08 Aug 2025) Author's response Author's tracked changes Manuscript

ED: Referee Nomination & Report Request started (28 Aug 2025) by Patricia Lawston-Parker

RR by Anonymous Referee #2 (29 Aug 2025)

ED: Publish as is (30 Aug 2025) by Patricia Lawston-Parker

AR by Gianluca Pappaccogli on behalf of the Authors (01 Sep 2025)

Short summary

We present a multilayer urban model, named MLUCM BEP+BEM, able to represent detailed urban geometry and vegetation, while simulating their interactions and feedback with the atmosphere. Its accuracy and low computational cost make it ideal for offline climate projections assessing urban impacts under various emission scenarios. Its features enable analysis of urban overheating, energy demand, thermal comfort, and evaluation of strategies like green/cool roofs and photovoltaic panels.