Dear Authors

It has been interesting to follow the discussion of your paper, and I think it has been fruitful in exploring the usefulness of your research and generating ideas for improving the publication. I am satisfied the reviewers saw the value of your research for publication, subject to the issues and clarifications that they raised being addressed. The thorough comments you have provided, and suggested modifications, seem appropriate to address any concerns and I thank you for providing such useful responses. I would therefore like to recommend this paper go through to publication subject to the revisions identified in these discussions.

I would also like to pick up on a couple of the comments regarding aspects of the paper, in particular, refining the abstract and discussion. The abstract I would request is revised to be more concise and tries to make more clear the general significance. Currently, the abstract is 2 paragraphs and I feel could be potentially reduced by 30-40%, whilst also "sharpened" to improve the clarity of the message. With regards to the discussion section, the text is currently more a summary (also noting that you have an additional summary section), and sometimes restating (somewhat expected) results - e.g. evap is connected to wind speed and VPD .... Please revise the discussion to more carefully expand on key components and findings, highlighting the novel aspects of your approach. A couple of examples come to mind include, what is the level of difference in evap from other systems that are not experiencing high salinity (this is sort of mentioned relative to Kinneret, but a useful area to expand given it is a unique feature of this case study), and also further expand the significance of the improved estimates for facilitating management of issues raised in the introduction, and further research required to manage the ongoing work into resolving the Dead Sea water balance. Through all of this, connections to non Dead Sea references I believe will also help strengthen the usefulness of this study to readers interested in applying your methodology to other systems (e.g. I work on a narrow hyper-saline lagoon system with limited fetch - would your approach be suitable for me in this case?). You may have other ideas as well...

I look forward to seeing your revised upload and please do not hesitate to contact me as you progress through the revision.
Best wishes
Matt

Dear Authors,
Thank you again for your very thorough replies to the reviewers and the revised version. I am satisfied the paper is ready for publication and think it is a significant contribution that will be very useful to the Dead Sea research community and others more generally.
Best wishes for your ongoing research
Matt Hipsey