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Interactive discussion

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RC1: 'Review of manuscript by Wu et al.', Anonymous Referee #1, 27 Apr 2017
- AC1: 'Responses to Referee #1 ', Chuanhao Wu, 26 Aug 2017
RC2: 'Review of "Responses of runoff to historical and future climate variability over China"', Anonymous Referee #2, 31 Jul 2017
- AC2: 'Responses to Referee #2', Chuanhao Wu, 26 Aug 2017

Peer-review completion

AR: Author's response | RR: Referee report | ED: Editor decision

ED: Reconsider after major revisions (further review by Editor and Referees) (03 Sep 2017) by Jim Freer

AR by Chuanhao Wu on behalf of the Authors (20 Sep 2017) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Referee Nomination & Report Request started (16 Nov 2017) by Jim Freer

RR by Simon Dadson (18 Dec 2017)

RR by Anonymous Referee #2 (04 Jan 2018)

Suggestions for revision or reasons for rejection

I'm glad my previous comments were found to be useful. I can fully understand why the authors have not wished to repeat the future projections using the Penman method applied to the original CMIP5 projections (this would be a large undertaking) and to makes sense to try to use an approproximation for this by adjusting the Thornwaite-based results. It seems that this works reasonably well for the range of PET seen in the historical period. However, I think it is important to know how well this cover the range of PET projected for the future - if the maximum future PET is within or only slightly above the range tested in figure 3, then we can probably be confident that this method yields a good estimate of the what a Penman-based estimate would give for the future. However, if the future PET extends well above this range, the projections should therefore be viewed with more caution. Therefore I recommend that the authors give some information on the range of PET projected for the future, preferably shown on figure 3 in some way, so that the reader is aware of possible limitations of this approximation.

I think it would also be worth explaining why Thornthwaite was used in the first place. e.g. is it following on form previous work?

In lines 345-346 of the revised manuscript, the authors say:
"Therefore, a more physically-basedbased PET calculation method (such as the Penman method) needs to be considered in the GCMs". I don't think "in the GCMs" is really what is meant here, as the authors are referring to their own calculations not those carried out *in* the GCMs - the GCM land surface schemes make their own calculations of ET, but those are not used here. The phrase "in the GCMs" should therefore be dropped from this sentence.

Finally, a technical correction is needed, which I must admit I noticed first time but forgot to include in my previous review (apologies). In Table 1, the resolution of all the CMIP5 GCMs is given as 1*1 degree. However, this is not the resolution of the GCMs - I assume that it must be the resolution of the post-processed data obtained by the authors via the Canadian Climate Centre (presumably the data have been re-gridded from the native resolution to 1 degree resolution). This should be clarified.

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ED: Publish subject to technical corrections (26 Feb 2018) by Jim Freer

AR by Chuanhao Wu on behalf of the Authors (04 Mar 2018) Author's response Manuscript