„ Field observations of soil moisture variability across scales ” by

maximum values occurring at mean moisture contents of 0.17 cm 3 /cm 3 and 0.19 cm 3 /cm 3 for the 800 m and 50-km scale, respectively. Based on these data, they derived empirical relationships between the coefficient of variation and the mean soil moisture content in order to estimate the uncertainty in field observations of mean moisture content. The authors are to be commended for providing this valuable database to the scientific community. We agree with the authors that such data are important in improving our understanding about the importance of sub-grid moisture variability in the parameterization and simulation of land surface processes. However, the authors limited themselves to an empirical description of the observed data by fitting exponential relationships to the mean moisture content versus CV data. We feel that this is a missed opportunity and would like to argue that an interpretation based on established theories and concepts in soil hydrology and upscaling theories could provide alternative methods and new insights for interpreting such data sets. 20