Dear Zachary,

Thank you for submitting your revised manuscript to GMD. Having looked at the reviews and your response, coupled to my own reading of the manuscript, I believe this article is suitable for publication in GDM (thank you for adding the model parameters for reproducibility).

In my opinion, the reviewers make two useful suggestions that you only really address properly in the response. Since few will read the response, their suggestions should be captured better in the manuscript. I'm suggesting two very minor edits prior to publication, but please write a brief rebuttal if you think these are not good ideas.

Firstly, reviewer one raises the issue of scale dependence which you agree is a valid point in the response. Given the exchange between authors and the reviewer I would assume this is worth a mention in the literature review or around P4L22 where the scale independence is highlighted?

Secondly both reviewers raise the issue of not including the snow module. I appreciate the reason for this from the response because you are describing what was transitioned, but I would struggle to properly understand that given the new second sentence of section 3.1. The link with the snow module omission (previous sentence) and other module omissions could be more explicit in my view to be more in keeping with the substantial revision suggested by the second reviewer.

Best wishes,
Jeff

Dear Jonathan,

Thank you for the revised version, I'm happy to accept the scientific content. The executive editor has sent me a reminder about GMD code availability policy, which I need to pass on. Apologies for this late in the day technical correction that I should have spotted earlier.

A GitHub URL is insufficiently persistent in the current version. GitHub themselves tell authors to use Zenodo for this. Could I ask that you follow the instructions here: https://guides.github.com/activities/citable-code/ to archive the exact version of the code which is being presented. Zenodo will provide you with the correct BibTeX entry your bibliography.

Further details on code and data availability requirements are in the GMD model code and data policy: https://www.geoscientific-model-development.net/about/code_and_data_policy.html. The reasons for the policy and more detail are provided in this editorial: https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-12-2215-2019.

Any problems please get back to me but I do not envisage needing to review the paper.

Best wishes,
Jeff