Dear authors,

two reviewers have given feedback on your manuscript. They both agree that you present timely and relevant research. They raise some concerns on the manuscript relating to how representative are the selected events and sites, as well as requesting a deeper interpretation.

I agree with the assessment. You have already responded to the reviewer comments and made proposition for changes, I think those will improve the manuscript. Additionally, I strongly encourage you to take bold steps to further address the underlying idea of the reviewers comments. For example both Reviewer #1 and Reviewer #2 state that the maximum threshold of the drought really only addresses a subset of the droughts and many of the drought events used in the introduction to motivate the research would probably not fall into this subset. You clarified this in the response, but more information is required that address the essence of the question: How representative is the subset of droughts? Are your results affected by a change of this choice? Similarly for the other major comments. Also, in my experience major comments are most effectively addressed by modifications at several instances in the manuscript, e.g. in abstract, introduction and discussion.

Also, both reviewers feel that the discussion would benefit from a deeper look into the dynamics of vegetation types and potentially some additional factors also influencing GPP during drought. I agree that enhancing the discussion would strengthen the manuscript.

Please submit the new manuscript with changes highlighted together with the point by point response. The new manuscript will be sent to a new round of reviews.

In your responses I found it sometimes difficult to spot the specific changes that you proposed in the longer text passages. Could you help the reviewers understand your reasoning by giving (i) a short explanation how the proposed change heals the raised issue and (ii) somehow highlight the important new parts in a longer passage? Alternatively to (ii), it is also ok to point to the corresponding lines in manuscript with changes highlighted.

I am looking forward to the next version of your manuscript.
Anke Hildebrandt

Dear authors,
thank you for your revision and new manuscript, which now has been assessed by the reviewers. Both think the manuscript has much improved. There are only some minor points left which Reviewer #2 mentions below. I agree with those comments and request that you still address those before the manuscript is submitted to publication.

With the new manuscript could you please submit a short response and
explanation in which way you addressed the comments.

I am looking forward to those last revisions.
Sincerely,
Anke Hildebrandt

Dear authors,
thank you very much for accommodating the last comments. I have only two quick and small editorial requests, before the manuscript can be published (below).

Thank you much and I am looking forward to the final version of the manuscript.
Sincerely,
Anke Hildebrandt

L 208
Please replace „which“ by „and“, as in the current version the definition that follows relates to the trade-off and not the WUE.

L 408-410
Thanks for moving this part to the discussion. Could you please have another look at the sentence which is currently not clear. Do you probably mean:
„ The partial correlation analysis showed that increase in VPD and decrease in soil moisture both decrease the rate of photosynthesis.“