Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci. Discuss., https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-2020-71-AC1, 2020 © Author(s) 2020. This work is distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License. Interactive comment on “Specific Climate Classification for Mediterranean Hydrology and Future Evolution Under Med-CORDEX RCM Scenarios” by Antoine Allam et al. Antoine Allam et al. antoine.allam@net.usj.edu.lb Received and published: 17 June 2020 Dear Prof. Cudennec, We are very grateful for your constructive comments on our article “Specific Climate Classification for Mediterranean Hydrology and Future Evolution Under Med-CORDEX RCM Scenarios”. We totally agree with all major and specific comments and recom- mendations. We propose to modify the manuscript in order to respond to all points raised especially in sections 3 and 4. We will reorganize the structure of these sections to present the grid based classification as reference to the catchment based and station based classification; and we will elaborate the discussion and conclusion correspon- C1 dently. All the references mentioned by the referee will be added in their corresponding section, in addition other articles will be added to justify the approach and methodology and discuss the obtained results. In this letter (see attached supplement), the comments of Referee #1 are given in black and our responses in blue. Kind regards, Antoine Allam, Roger Moussa, Wajdi Najem, Claude Bocquillon Overview The draft paper is promising as it addresses important hydroclimatic questions, with innovative approaches over the whole Mediterranean basin. Methodology and results are convincing and of high quality. The presentation and discussion can be improved. Perspectives are strong for follow ups on the hydrological aspects as announced in the conclusion. Yet it is here essentially dealing with climatic aspects and the links and orientations to hydrology are claimed with few justifications. These should be made more explicit: how are the chosen climatic indices "hydrology driven" (section 3.1)? And how are the indices dealing with precipitation seasonality specific to the Mediterranean hydroclimatic/hydrometeorological context (L203)? We thank Referee #1 for all his comments and agree that the choice of the climatic indices and their relation to hydrology and precipitation seasonality should be justified and detailed furthermore. The climatic, physiographic and hydrological characterisa- tion of Mediterranenan catchments are studied and discussed in the thesis of Allam which this article constitutes the first publication. The climatic indices resulting from this classification could be the basis for a hydrological characterisation of Mediter- ranean catchments using multivariate analysis, useful for agriculture, ecohydrology, economy. We suggest modifying the text in section 3.1 as follows: “The climatic indices were in- C2