Dear Dr. Zheng,

Thank you for submitting your manuscript “Decadal variation of extreme drought and flood in North China revealed by documentary-based seasonal precipitation reconstruction for the past 300 years” to Climate of the Past.

Your manuscript has now been seen by two reviewers. Both reviewers are overall positive about your work, recommending publication after some moderate corrections, and there is no doubt that a better understanding on large-scale drought events is of significant societal interest. I therefore invite you to resubmit your manuscript after moderate revision, taking all comments by the reviewers into account.

In addition to addressing the reviewers’ comments, I would ask you to expand further on your explanations to the methodologies, as many of the journal readers (myself included) are less familiar with the methodologies used in your study. I would in particular ask you to explain more clearly your methods of identifying droughts (methods section 2.2), show more clearly how you obtain your results in (data, 3.1) (here a figure would be welcome), and explain the statistical methods used when comparing drought events and climate phenomena such as ENSO. Although you are already well on your way according to your comments to the reviewers’ comments, I would still ask you to expand on this part. Also, I would recommend you to illustrate the comparison through e.g. cross-plots or some other figure, which would make the data visually easier to understand and evaluate for the reader.

I could also not help wondering if you can identify any long-term pattern in your data? Based on your manuscript, if does not seem so, but it would be beneficial if you could discuss this possibility.
As for your answer to point 4 to Reviewer 1’s comments, please remember that you can only assume and suggest a driving mechanism (which I agree with the reviewer was lacking), but you cannot be sure, that your suggestion is correct. So consider your wording. Also, comparison to modern weather data may here be useful, if possible.

Please mark in the text, any changes that you make to the manuscript.

Kind regards,
Marit-Solveig Seidenkrantz, co-Editor in Chief

Dear Dr. Zheng,

Thank you for submitting your revised manuscript, which I have read thoroughly. You have answered the reviewers' comments in detail. However, I believe that you slightly misunderstood my previous comments “I could also not help wondering if you can identify any long-term pattern in your data. Based on your manuscript, if does not seem so, but it would be beneficial if you could discuss this possibility.”

In your answer (conclusion), you just mention the possibility of using the data for studies of longer-term patterns. But what I really hoped you would do, was to check if there is indeed any indication in your data on whether the frequency of drought/floods has changed over time? As your data reach back in time prior to the start of industrialization, information on potential changes (or not) in droughts/flood frequency/severety would be very valuable, if possible.

Kind regards,

Marit-Solveig Seidenkrantz
Co-Editor in Chief, Climate of the Past