The two referees proposed several ways of changing the manuscript and also mentioned many issues with the paper that need careful attention by the authors. The paper will be reconsidered after major revisions of theses points are being taken and included into the manuscript. Please highlight clearly what you changed in the revised manuscript, so the reviewers are able to assess your changes. I would in particularly ask the authors to balance the statements and provide clear reasons while isotope and hydrometric studies do in general show a good agreement between isotope studies and hydrometric studies, but there is a general trend of overestimation of transpiration fraction of total evaporation when using the isotope method. Since the numbers of isotope studies are up to know also limited and several assumptions have to be made as well (e.g. evaporation of intercepted water, that is not considered in the isotope studies, but a very important component of the overall ET), the authors need to be careful in making too strong statements into the one or other direction.
Best regards
Markus Weiler

Dear Authors,

the paper improved considerable by including several suggestions and ideas of the reviewers. The only weak point in my opinion is that the reader is left a bit puzzled with the differences between the studies presented in Figure 1. I think the main reason for this is, that the reader only is informed about the methods used in the different studies, but not about the assumptions and details (spatial and temporal scale, vegetation type, models or/and measurements, which flukes are measured (soil evaporation, transpiration, interception). I think it would be very useful if the authors could attached a table with the necessary information to each study presented in Figure 1, so the reader is better able to evaluate why the results are different.

Best regards
Markus Weiler

Thanks for the fast response and the informative table.

best regards
Markus Weiler