Dear Author,

Thank you for this careful revision of your manuscript answering basically all the referees' comments.

I however have the minor following remarks to make:

-Paper title: I think it would read better to put "option" before "(ISBA-MEB)".

-L12-13: wouldn't it be better to put this sentence at the past tense: "It became clear ... had been reached and there was a need ..." ?

-L23: please put a comma after "part two": part two, which ...

-L76-77: you write that you changed L76-77 to answer the referee' comment but I do not see any changes and the sentence still reads "... has been replaced in recent years by improved realism with respect to ...".

-L170-175: Again, I think that "... ISBA-MEB option (referred to hereafter simply as MEB) ..." and "... multi-layer soil scheme (ISBA-DF: explicit DiFfusion equation for heat and Richard’s equation for soil water flow) ..." and "snow parameterisation (ISBA-ES: multi-layer Explicit Snow processes with 12 layers by default) ..." would read better.

-L657-658: I do not see the correction and the sentence "The soil liquid water and equivalent frozen water equivalent volumetric water content are defined ..." still sounds awkward to me.