Dear Dr. De Luca,

Thank you for replying to all reviewer comments. All three reviewers are positive about the manuscript and its scientific value and recommend minor revisions.

In addition to the reviewer comments, I have one further comment on the manuscript: The authors find an increase in Tmax-P coupling based on alpha (section 3). How much (if anything at all) of this increases can be explained by an increase in temperature alone? I would like to see a bit more discussion on this, in particular because you relate these finding to Zscheischler & Seneviratne (2017) in L 204. However, Zscheischler & Seneviratne found an increase in summer T-P coupling in CMIP5 after subtracting long-term trends. Hence, here the projected increase in coupling comes in addition to long-term climate change. Is your approach able to detect changes in coupling in a non-stationary climate?

I invite you to revise the manuscript according to the reviewers’ comments, your replies and my comment above.

Best regards,
Jakob Zscheischler

Dear Dr. De Luca,

thank you for submitting your revised manuscript, which satisfactorily addresses all reviewer comments, provides a much clearer introduction into the methods and a more detailed discussion.

While going through the text again, I stumbled over one sentence, for which I would like to seek clarification before acceptance. In L 183 you write "We hypothesise that the large number of CDEs during July and August (Figures 3b and S7b) can be linked to extreme summertime precipitation events, that cool the air and increase wetness." Couldn't the high numbers of CDEs in summer also stem from warm-dry events? In particular, could the events in DJF and JA be of different type? E.g. in winter, we might have strong recurrence of cold-wet events and in summer we have strong recurrence of warm-dry events? Furthermore, couldn't this easily be checked by separate composite map for JA (similar to Fig. 4d,f but for JA)? If I'm misunderstanding something here, please clarify.

Also, isn't there a slight contradiction in the two sentences that follow: "We further note that, notwithstanding the previously mentioned correlation between co-persistence and alpha, the seasonality of θ−1 extremes – defined analogously to the CDEs – does not reflect that of the CDEs (not shown). For both variable combinations, the two shoulder seasons (i.e. spring and autumn) display very few CDEs." There is no correlation but the two shoulder seasons display very few CDEs in both cases?

Best regards,
Jakob

Dear Dr. De Luca,

thank you for addressing all remaining comments. I'm happy to accept this manuscript for publication.

Best regards,
Jakob Zscheischler