De Hertog et al., investigated the impact of idealized land cover and land management changes (LCLMCs) on atmospheric moisture transport and recycling. They used three full coupled ESMs, i.e. CESM, MPI-ESM and EC-EARTH and three LCLMC scenarios (cropland, afforestation, and unlimited irrigation) to isolate the impact of different kind of LCLMCs on local vs. non-local land-surface fluxes and moisture transport. An offline moisture tracking model was also used to assess LCLMC impact on moisture recycling at local vs continental scale. They found that LCLMCs had a considerable impact on moisture recycling but large spread existed between ESMs.

I found the studied subject really interesting. LCLMCs are widespread and has drawn the attention of the whole world for a long time. Yet, its impact on regional to global climate, in particular the moisture transport and rainfall, is still unclear. Studies in this field are very welcome to improve our understanding on this issue. However, after reading the manuscript I have a number of concerns, questions, and remarks on the methodology and conclusion. I hope that you find my comments useful and use them to improve your manuscript.

Major comments:

1. The large uncertainty among the three ESMs undermines the credibility of the conclusion drawn in this study. For example, LCLMCs-induced changes in precipitation, MFC and length scale (Figures 3-8) show considerable spread or even opposite signs between EMSs. Although the conclusions of this study may be intriguing, they lack robust support from ESMs.

1. Many ESMs-based studies have investigated LCLMCs-induced water flux change, either with one model (Portmann et al., 2022) or several models (Boysen et al., 2020) as the authors have noted. It is not new to know cropland/grassland expansion causes drying and afforestation causes wetting. Please highlight your new findings or novelty in the abstract.

1. The authors added much details on precipitation and evaporation length scales, but this concept is still confusing and hard to understand, in particular the author wrote “they should not be interpreted as actual travel distance…”. Hence, why not used a simple metric with explicitly physical meaning, such as the distance of water vapor transport before precipitating again over land in Staal et al. (2018).

1. L45-49 and L414-415: The authors may have a misunderstanding on one-way/two-way interaction (offline vs coupled) and reanalyses. Although moisture tracking model is offline, but the analyses are observation-based, i.e. including realistic LCLMC-induced circulation changes. In this case, moisture tracking model indirectly includes the impact of these circulation changes on water fluxes (two-way). Unless in a scenario in which reanalyses do not include these circulation changes (the LCLMCs are not realistic), it is a one-way interaction. In this sense, Tuinenburg and Staal (2020) and Cui et al. (2022) are two-way studies.

Minor comments

1. In many places, it is hard to follow, please be concise.

1. In the beginning of abstract, the author noted “their effects on moisture fluxes and recycling remain uncertain…”. At the end of abstract, “more research is needed to constrain the uncertainty…”, it sounds like the situation did not change much after the significant amount of work by the authors?

1. L29-32: Add some recent refs, such as Smith et al. (2023) and Cui et al. (2022).

1. L58: the ref missed title in the bibliography

1. L117: we are not able to separate?

1. L190-194: given the limitations of local recycling, why not only use continental recycling?

Reference

Boysen, L. R., Brovkin, V., Pongratz, J., Lawrence, D. M., Lawrence, P., Vuichard, N., Peylin, P., Liddicoat, S., Hajima, T., Zhang, Y., Rocher, M., Delire, C., Séférian, R., Arora, V. K., Nieradzik, L., Anthoni, P., Thiery, W., Laguë, M. M., Lawrence, D. & Lo, M.-H. Global climate response to idealized deforestation in CMIP6 models. Biogeosciences 17, 5615-5638, (2020).

Portmann, R., Beyerle, U., Davin, E., Fischer, E. M., De Hertog, S. & Schemm, S. Global forestation and deforestation affect remote climate via adjusted atmosphere and ocean circulation. Nat Commun 13, 5569, (2022).

Smith, C., Baker, J. C. A. & Spracklen, D. V. Tropical deforestation causes large reductions in observed precipitation. Nature, (2023).

Staal, A., Tuinenburg, O. A., Bosmans, J. H. C., Holmgren, M., van Nes, E. H., Scheffer, M., Zemp, D. C. & Dekker, S. C. Forest-rainfall cascades buffer against drought across the Amazon. Nature Climate Change 8, 539-543, (2018).

Tuinenburg, O. A. & Staal, A. Tracking the global flows of atmospheric moisture and associated uncertainties. Hydrology and Earth System Sciences 24, 2419-2435, (2020).

Cui, J. P., Lian, X., Huntingford, C., Gimeno, L., Wang, T., Ding, J. Z., He, M. Z., Xu, H., Chen, A. P., Gentine, P. & Piao, S. L. Global water availability boosted by vegetation-driven changes in atmospheric moisture transport. Nature Geoscience 15, 982–988, (2022).

I thank the authors for their revisions. In my previous review, I named two issues that had not been resolved yet in the first revision. These were 1) insufficient discussion of length scales; and 2) inappropriate use of the term 'feedback'. In the current version, these issues have been resolved. Proper discussion is provided about the results relating to length scales and the authors refrain from 'feedback' (except where appropriate). Congratulations on this interesting study.