Dear authors,

four invited reviewers and one student reviewer have commented on your manuscript. The comments are generally supportive of the collected lysimeter dataset, and the relevance of the analysis. The paper is very well written and argued. All reviewers also have raised similar concerns with regard to the uncertainty of the parameters of the Budyko model, the applied evapotranspiration product, the representativeness of the lysimeter dataset and the validation of the Budyko model based on observations. As one of the reviewer framed it: The paper is affected by the attribution problem and results should therefore be communicated with utter care.

Together with the reviewers, I appreciate the collected dataset and analysis. I also appreciate the constructive author replies to the reviewers during the interacting discussion indicating adjustments in the manuscript regarding the applied ET product, quantification of the uncertainty and validation. I have also requested with reviewer #1 a response to your last comment (AC7 of March 14), which is as follows:

“Reviewer Reply: I am happy to see that the authors take my suggestions seriously and think that this is useful to implement.
The CRU-PET values are substantially larger (almost by a factor of 2) compared to the former version. I was also hoping that a better observation describing the energy limitation of evapotranspiration. Note that CRU-PET is based on the FAO-Penman-Monteith reference evapotranspiration for a GRASS surface (Harris et al., 2014 IJC). That might explain why the forest sites in Plynlimon, Castricum still exceed the CRU-PET estimates.”

In your revision, please also consider the remarks regarding green and blue water raised by two of the reviewers. In line with Reviewer #3, please respond to the question of whether w may be affected by differences in irrigated vs non irrigated crops, specifically in the Southern Europe. Finally, as all reviewers point out the substantial uncertainty of the analysis, I urge you to phrase the conclusions of the study in a way that is balanced with the uncertainty of the results.

Please submit the revised manuscript, with changes highlighted, together with a point by point response to all of the reviewers comments, specifically also addressing comments and questions which were not yet addressed in the discussion.

I thank both the authors and reviewers for the constructive discussion and look forward to the next version of this manuscript,
Anke Hildebrandt

Dear authors,

thank you for the revision of your manuscript. You have responded to and addressed the comments of the reviewers in the new version and I think that the paper is almost ready to be published in HESS given some small additional amendments according to reviewer #1. I am looking forward to the final version of your manuscript.

Also, now at the end of this process, I would like to thank all of the reviewers and the authors for the constructive discussion and thorough revision of this manuscript.

Anke Hildebrandt