Dear Authors

There are two helpful reviews to improve the quality of the paper. One of them requiring moderate changes, one which is a little bit more critical.
Particular the remark on "So, what which is new can we conclude from this study? I don’t mean to say that there is nothing new here. I believe there is, but the authors need to do a better job highlighting it, and attempting to offer some general conclusions that will be of interest not only at the local level." is a strong criteria for publication.
Hence I think the paper need major revisions.

I thank you for your detailed answers to each review comment and the changes you made in the manuscript. I will sent the paper to the more critical reviewer to see his opinion on the new version of your paper.

Best regards
Ralf Merz

Dear Authors,

your revised paper was reviewer by only one reviewer. )Others declined or did not send their comments). Hence, based on the reviewer and editor's review, I recommend to publish the paper after technical corrections. (See Reviewer 1 or below). I think you addressed well the review comments

best regards
Ralf Merz


Review 1

The authors well accounted for the review comments. I find the article became a bit long, but it is difficult to blame the authors for that, given their efforts to answer all the review comments. I think the article is now suitable for publication. I only suggest a few minor editorial changes, which can be solved at the edition stage.

L175: “(Chile), which”
L271: “a 12-year period”
L273: “500-m resolution”
L289: “(~ 16° Brix, i.e. 160 g of sucrose per liter)”
L376: “2010]. Melt”
L647: “the model used.”
L822 (and Table 1): The unit of X2 is mm/day.
Table 2: Indicate the meaning of BB, FB and HV in the figure caption.
Table 5: Indicate in the caption that these results are for Models B and C and for the five elevation zones (EZ)
L1391, Figure 10: “for Models B and C with”