Dear Mr. Perry,

I am now in receipt of two reviews of your manuscript entitled "A Systematic Assessment of Drought Termination in the United Kingdom" by you and your co-authors. On the basis on these reviews, a major revision is recommended. You have addressed the comments raised in a clear and detailed manner, and I look forward to receiving your revised manuscript making the changes that you suggest in your responses to the referee comments.

Best wishes,
Lena M. Tallaksen
Special issue editor

Dear Authors,

Thank you for the detailed response to the referee comments and corresponding amendments to the text. I think that you have handled the comments and concerns from the reviewers well and find that the revised manuscript has significantly improved. In particular, the new figure and discussion related to the choice of parameter values for identifying the drought termination events adds to the paper.

As highlighted by Referee #2 (Report #1), it is important to state that focus is on multi-year, multi-seasonal drought events already in the abstract (as well as Introduction) as this is important information for the reader and central to your work. This is achieved by defining a drought event as a deviation from the long term monthly mean along with the choice of parameters values, and reflected in the multi-year duration of the two termination events discussed in detail (1995-1998 & 2009-2012).

I further support Referee #2 (Report #1) that the statement on P16, L30-31 requires justifications. As I read it, you aim to highlight that by looking at deviation from the (monthly) mean flow, long duration droughts result (not that this relates to using a monthly time resolution). I further advice adding a few references when stating what thresholds are commonly used in other studies.

Referee #1 (original review, P12, L11-16) discusses the sporadic nature of rainfall as compared to catchment characteristics in controlling the variability in drought termination for individual events. In the modified manuscript this is accounted for by stating (p12, L1) “is also partly determined by catchment properties”. Later on P14, L27 it is written: “Drought termination reflects a complex interplay of the specific hydroclimatic conditions with local catchment properties”. I find this latter phrasing better reflecting what is happening. That is, it is the interplay between rainfall variability and catchment properties that control the streamflow response (as also reflected on P12, L7 where you write that “catchments … are typically impermeable and responsive to rainfall”). Thus, in a fast responding catchment, sporadic rainfall will largely control the drought termination, whereas in a less responsive catchment, it may not. Thus, I recommend to get this duality more clearly across already at the start of Section 5.1, as I find ‘partly determined’ to be rather vague.

On re-reading, I have as editor picked up some further minor comments and technical edits that I considered worth addressing:
P1, L13: comma before ‘but’
P2, L4: comma before ‘but’
P2, L26: what does ‘their’ refer back to here?
P2, L29: would delete the ‘s’ in ‘ends’
P2, L31: suggest adding a semicolon so that it reads: ‘There are two notable exceptions; Bonsal..
P5, L2: move the semicolon to after DM so that it reads: ‘…magnitude, DM; Fig. 2)’.
P5, L17: What does ‘This study’ refer to here? If your study, I suggest to rather write something like: ‘An average of two events per decade over the last 50 year was identified as optimal for a drought chronology for the UK.’
P5, L24: ‘response surfaces’ as a term must here be introduced (at least by referring to Fig.3 already here).
P6, L2: replace ‘above’ with the parameter values themselves (can be given in brackets).
P6, L3: I would prefer this sentence to be written in the present tense as it is generally valid.
P10, L23: add blank ‘Similar correlation …’
P11, L1-16: make sure to introduce what is considered a significant correlation up front in this paragraph (now it comes at the end). Further, I suggest not to start with the insignificant correlations, rather the significant ones, and avoid terms like ‘the strongest’; either the link is significant or not for a given (predefined) significance level.
P12, L24: Please expand on the statement ‘Elevation is a better indicator …’ as it is of interest for the reader to learn why this is so in the UK.
P15, L22: comma before (and/or after) ‘hence’
P17, L3: I wonder if you can say that focus is on the ‘dynamics of river flow’ when using a monthly time resolution.

Thank you for the detailed response to the referee and editor comments and corresponding amendments to the text. You have satisfactory addressed all these and I am pleased to accept your paper for publication.