The authors show an excellent job of coupling an urban model to the VIC model to improve the capability of this global land surface model. The manuscript is well organized, with concrete results demonstrating the advantages of the VIC-urban model. I think it should be accepted after considering the following minor issues.

1. The authors are suggested to give more information about the base map and urban maps. Did the authors update different urban maps during the study period? Because the study period was a time of high urbanization, the urban maps should have changed significantly over time.

2. More details about the Beijing simulation are needed.  What is the simulation resolution of the VIC model? The resolution of the various data used in the model is inconsistent, what methodology did the authors use to standardize the resolution.

3. It is better to show more details about the urban parameters, for example,  the spatial distribution maps of the parameters of the urban model of Beijing.

4.For figure 6 and talbe 3, can the authors show the results in daily scale? 

This is a nice manuscript with a good attempt to include urban characteristics in VIC to make VIC usable for urban regions. I have a few comments, which the authors may address:

1. Urban models should have a strong human component characterized by human behavior and it is difficult to consider the same in VIC. THis is my major concern. The data requitement for development such module is also huge. The authors need to consider this very seriously.

2. For urban heat balance, the anthropogenic heat plays a major role, and I am not sure how do the authors consider them. There are weekly variations in energy budget, like in weekends the office areas will have low energy requirements. The transportation component have a strong sub-daily variations. These are very important and I am a bit curious how to consider them in VIC.

3. The same point is applicable for water use as well.

4. There are existing models like SUEWS, how is the proposed model bettter than SUEWS frameowrk.

I recommend major revision and request the authors to address the above mentioned points.