Dear Editor, We thank you for your constructive criticism and comments. We acknowledge that comparing PET with the other drought indicators is not giving an additional value to the manuscript. According that we've revised the paper by excluding all the comparison with PET. In order to do that we've changed the text accordingly (highlighted with track changes) and figures 5, 7 and 8 were modified. Best regards, Gustavo Naumann. 1 Comparison of drought indicators derived from multiple 2 datasets over Africa 3 Gustavo Naumann1, Emanuel Dutra2, Paulo Barbosa1, Florian Pappenberger2, 4 Fredrik Wetterhall2 and Jürgen Vogt1. 5 [1]{European Commission, Joint Research Centre, Ispra, Italy} 6 [2]{European Centre for Medium Range Weather Forecasts, Reading, United Kingdom} 7 Correspondence to: G. Naumann (
[email protected]) 8 9 Abstract 10 Drought monitoring is a key component to mitigate impacts of droughts. Lack of reliable and 11 up-to-date precipitation datasets is a common challenge across the Globe. This study 12 investigates different datasets and drought indicators on their capability to improve drought 13 monitoring in Africa. The study was performed for four river basins located in different 14 climatic regions (the Oum er-Rbia in Morocco, the Blue Nile in Eastern Africa, the Upper 15 Niger in Western Africa, and the Limpopo in South-Eastern Africa) as well as the Greater 16 Horn of Africa. 17 The five precipitation datasets compared are the ECMWF ERA – Interim reanalysis, the 18 Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission satellite monthly rainfall product 3B-43, the Global 19 Precipitation Climatology Centre gridded precipitation dataset, the Global Precipitation 20 Climatology Project Global Monthly Merged Precipitation Analyses, and the Climate 21 Prediction Center Merged Analysis of Precipitation.