Dear authors,

Your manuscript has now been reviewed by two reviewers, and you have responded to these reviews. You explicitly stated that you disagreed with the main critique of the first reviewer, arguing that your manuscript does fit the scope of HESS. Given the importance of hydrology for decision-making of such a huge project as the Water Highway project I find this paper having a high societal relevance and therefore I invite you to revise the manuscript, taking all the points raised by the two reviewers paper into account and explain in detail how you have addressed these comments.

I have also carefully read the paper and made some comments and edits in the pdf (attached). I also invite you to address these in the revised manuscript.

Dear authors,

I am happy about how you have addressed the issues raised by the two reviewers and my own suggestions, except for improving figure 12 (now figure 11), i.e. to include uncertainty ranges (remark 1 from reviewer 2). Kindly improve.

However, I also note that some of my editorial suggestions that I made in the pdf of the previous version were not taken up. I however insist. Please see the edits and comments I have now inserted in the pdf of your version 3. Kindly attend to all these (admittedly minor) editorial issues. If you disagree, please justify.

I think these changes are really minor and can be implemented in a matter of days.

I look forward to receiving a final version.