Dear authors,
Thank you for your responses to the reviewer comments and for your efforts to address their concerns. Please proceed to submit a marked up version of your manuscript indicating the changes that have been made, following the journal's instructions, for further review.

Dear authors,

Both reviewers offered constructive and helpful comments on how this paper could be improved. However, the revisions have not sufficiently addressed the concerns raised and the suggestions provided, and as it stands, the paper is not suitable for final publication. There are some significant issues that need to be resolved, in particular around the model setup, geofabric, appropriateness of model physics, parameterization, forcing, and calibration/evaluation, which appear now to be beyond the scope of a revision to the paper in its current form. I would encourage you to carefully consider the helpful suggestions by the reviewers in preparing a manuscript for re-submission.

Dear authors,
Thank you for your work to revise the paper. It has been greatly improved and is now ready for final publication. I have some final technical comments:
1. In the intro, you say "Great Lakes region contains ~20 per cent of the world’s freshwater", which is not correct. (Maybe you mean % of surface freshwater apart from glaciers and ice sheets, or something else?)
2. In section 2.1 you mention "Greatest Toronto Area"; this should be "Greater Toronto Area".