Dear Authors,

I have received two positive reviews of your work and I am recommending that your work should be published subject to minor revisions. I am happy with the proposed changes in response to the reviewer's comments.

I was particularly interested in your work because I had attempted to do something similar, but using changes in surface temperature (https://journals.ametsoc.org/jhm/article/14/5/1605/206524/Quantifying-Land-Surface-Temperature-Variability). When you use the SPAC (fig 6) to diagnose differences I have to say I tended to agree with R1. I myself was wondering about the spatial scales of the data and multiple, fine-scale contributions to your results. I have no problem with the SPAC analysis, so do not feel you need a change anything, but you might consider reflecting that data coarseness/aggregation may smear dry-down interpretation too. A sentence on data resolution may warrant a sentence if you feel it is appropriate.

In your response to R2, you make clear that the LAI magnitude itself isn't that important, but rather the direction of change, might it be worth emphasising this point in the manuscript too for other readers? Similarly, you note that your results were broadly robust to the use of fapar instead, why not again note this for the reader. Perhaps you might also include a version of fig 4 in the supplement (optional)?

Best wishes,

Martin De Kauwe

Dear Authors,

Thank you for your careful consideration of the reviewers comments. The associate editor is also supportive of your work, but I would encourage you to take their comments on board when preparing your revision.

Best wishes,
Trevor

Dear Authors,

Congratulations, I am happy to recommend publication based on your revisions. However, I was looking through your manuscript and I don't see any statement about code availability, including a repository for the SPAC model. Can I strongly encourage you to address this in your final submission please? It is important for robust, repeatable science.

Best wishes,

Martin