Dear authors,

as you have seen the two reviewers highly appreciate your contribution. I agree with this assessment and I think that your manuscript does have the potential to become an important reference. However, the reviewers also raise a few relevant concerns and provide several excellent suggestions to strengthen the manuscript.
From my perspective the most relevant point is the framing of the manuscript as stressed by reviewer#1. While the analysis presented does indeed fall within the scope of HESS, the study comes too much across as a technical report. I understand that it is a thin line between what you are trying to do and technical reports. Yet, I feel the manuscript needs to be a bit more balanced towards science aspects. This could be relatively easily done by sharpening the science question, the research hypotheses to be tested and the discussion of the scientific context. It may also be very valuable to discuss the limitations inherent in the assumptions taken and their (potential) effects on the results/interpretation in more detail as requested by reviewer#2.
Now while I also understand that Group E thankfully made their data and knowledge available to allow a bottom-up approach here, Group E will also benefit from this study. In that sense, I believe the repeated explicit mentioning of Group E does not do service to this manuscript. The work would benefit from less emphasis on the name of the industry partner and a more generic presentation of the work.

I am looking forward to receiving a revised version of your manuscript, in which all the reviewer comments are adequately addressed.
Best regards, Markus Hrachowitz

Dear authors,

thank you for the detailed and thoughtful revision of your manuscript. I agree with the reviewer that most of the reviewer comments were adequately addressed. This is a very interesting manuscript which has the potential to generate quite some impact in the community. I am therefore glad to accept it as for publication in HESS. Congratulations on this contribution!
Best wishes,
Markus Hrachowitz