Dear Stefan,
thank you very much for your response to the two referees. Please, go ahead and provide a revised manuscript version. Special emphasis should be placed on the elucidation of the soil-moisture/atmosphere feedback and the comments from the somewhat more critical anonymous reviewer. In view of the audience of Earth System Dynamics you may elaborate a bit more on the general implications of your findings for research in other relevant disciplines. I look forward to your revised manuscript!
Best wishes, Christoph Heinze

Dear Dr. Hagemann,
many thanks for your revised manuscript version and the thorough report about changes made. I am happy to accept your manuscript under the condition that you take care of a minor technical correction:
The coloured lines in Fig. 8 and the text in Fig. 11(especially the string "Frozen soil, less infiltration") show some grey shadow around them which do not look nice. It is potentially just a graphics file conversion problem. Can you, please, try to replot the firgures so that these greyish shadows do not appear in the final version? Congratulations with your paper and thank you for using the open access way of publishing.
Best regards, Christoph