The two reviewers are both positive about the relevance and level of interest of the analysis, and generally subscribe the followed approach and data used. Both reviewers also make suggestions for further analysis and clarifications, and agree on a desire to elaborate more on the results and implications of the study.

The authors have given a detailed point-by-point reply to the review comments, and agree with nearly all comments made. Also they make solid proposals for accommodating these comments, thereby making proper use of the review process to clarify the manuscript and increase the level of interest even further.

I do agree with the reviewers assessments and also appreciate the authors' willingness and ability to modify their manuscript accordingly. I do invite the authors to follow this approach, and will check on the degree to which the authors' intentions to reply to the reviews are being met in a new version of the manuscript. If this revision is in my view succesfull in addressing the reviewers' needs I will not send it out for another review round

Dear Dr. Flach and co-authors,

your manuscript has been considered as a relevant and interesting contribution, but has also received some critical evaluation concerning its scientific quality and its presentation quality. Based on your responses the guest editor, Dr. van den Hurk, suggests that you should be invited to submit a revised manuscript. I concur, but also think that in view of the substantial nature of the revisions required, the revised manuscript should be re-assessed by two reviewers before the next decision can be taken.

Best regards,

Michael Bahn
(Co-Editor-in-Chief)

One of the reviewers accepted the revised manuscript, the other reviewer noted significant improvements to the manuscript but recommended minor revisions. The main points of this reviewer were that the results section is still a bit short, while the methods section is now too long.

Since the extension of the methods section was made in response to a review I tend to accept the current format of that section, apart maybe from moving the list of methodological steps to a figure or annex, to improve the text flow.

I do not consider the results section too short as such (the figures should preferably be positioned in that section, not in section 2), but it does miss some introduction text to what is the rationale of the analysis. I do not recommend to repeat section 1 and 2, but to summarize these, in order to have the results section readable as a more or less stand-alone text.

While doing the minor revisions I further would appreciate a point-by-point reply to the other comments made by the reviewer. And I would be pleased to have the contrast of the texts within figure 3 increased to improve readability.

I did spot quite a few imperfect uses of language, and also the ordering of the words could be improved by having the text edited by a native English speaker.

I endorse the handling editor's decision to publish the manuscript subject to minor revision, following the editor's assessment of the authors' responses and the revisions made.

All review and editor comments have been sufficiently addressed.