Interactive comment on “Contrasting roles of interception and transpiration in the hydrological cycle – Part 1: Simple Terrestrial Evaporation to Atmosphere Model” by L. Wang-Erlandsson et al

A recursive claim that there is a ’scarcity of global data on evaporative partitioning’ is used to justify the development of the STEAM model (see e.g. pg. 206, L23). However, over the last decade, there have been numerous efforts to derive the separate components of the terrestrial evaporative flux at the global scale, not just from land surface models and climate reanalyses, but also by combining satellite data. Different operational datasets of global transpiration, interception loss, soil evaporation, open-water evaporation or snow sublimation are currently used within the global evaporation community; amongst others: the MODIS evaporation product1,2, the PT-JPL product3, or the GLEAM model4,5. Global inter-comparison of these models, and their partitioning of evaporation, is the subject of projects like the LandFlux initiative of GEWEX (2010–present)6 or the European Space Agency (ESA) WACMOS-ET (2012–present)7.