Please see attached Comments to the Author.

Dear Dr. Cao,

Please make the revisions as suggested in the final review quoted here:

"Compared to the previous version, I think the authors have made a great effort to improve the clarity and language. They have adequately answered the questions the reviewers and editor had.

Given this, I suggest this revised version should be granted publication.

Yet, the authors might want to take into account the following remarks, of mainly technical details:

• Page 1, Line 3: ’6’ − > ’six’

• Page 6, Line 11-13: ”Q25” and ”Q75”. Again, I know that means quantiles at different levels. However, that are not general acronyms for all communities. The authors should provide what the exact means of them are. I suggest you could spell out them, as they were used only here twice, e.g., ”Q25” − > 25th percentile [or lower quartile].

• Page 8: Some data used have to be acknowledged, such as NDVI, GDEM2, etc.

• Page 10, Line 23-24: I know previous JGR papers only have article numbers. I am not sure ”n/a-n/a” is allowed for TC publication standard.

• Page 11, Line 1-2: The DOI link seems not available. This paper may also need pages here. Please check them.

• Figure 2: It looks like missing lakes on the maps. Please check them again."

I would like to read over the final version before recommending publication.

Thanks again to you and your co-authors for your work.

Best regards,

Peter

Thank you again for your revisions. I have just a few additional minor revision that need to be treated before publication. These revisions are needed in order to clear up a few points. After I see these small changes, the manuscript will be ready to publish.

Please see my comments marked up in the attached "Comments to the Author"

Cheers,

Peter

Thank you for your revisions. Just a couple of technical edits to make now.

Cheers,

Peter