title: Reply to the comment on "Rainfall erosivity in Europe" by Auerswald et al.
abstract: Recently, in the Auerswald et al. (2015) comment on "Rainfall erosivity in Europe", 5 criticisms were addressed: i) the neglect of seasonal erosion indices, ii) the neglect of published studies and data, iii) the low temporal resolution of the data, especially of the maximum rain intensity, iv) the use of precipitation data instead of rain data and the subsequent deviation of the R-factor in Germany and Austria compared with previous studies, and v) the differences in considered time periods between countries. We reply as follows: (i) An evaluation of the seasonal erosion index at the European scale is, to our knowledge, not achievable at present with the available data but would be a future goal. Synchronous publication of the seasonal erosion index is not mandatory, specifically because seasonal soil loss ratios are not available at this scale to date. We are looking forward to the appropriate study by the authors of the comment, who assert that they have access to the required data. (ii) We discuss and evaluate relevant studies in our original work and in this reply; however, we cannot consider what is not available to the scientific community. (iii) The third point of critique was based on a misunderstanding by Auerswald et al. (2015), as we did indeed calculate the maximum intensity with the highest resolution of data available. (iv) The low R-factor values in Germany and the higher values in Austria compared with previous studies are not due to the involvement of snow but are rather due to a Pan-European interpolation. We argue that an interpolation across the borders of Austria creates a more reliable data set. (v) We agree that the use of a short time series or time series from different periods is generally a problem in all large-scale studies and requires improvement in the future. However, because this affects countries with a rather low variability of the R-factor in our study, we are confident that the overall results of the map are not biased. In conclusion, the Pan-European rainfall data compilation (REDES) was a great success and yielded data from 1541 stations with an average length of 17.1years and a temporal resolution of <60min. However, a Pan-European data collection will never be complete without the help and supply of data from its users. Thus, we invite the authors of the comment to share their data in the open REDES to help build even better rainfall-erosivity maps at regional or European scales.
authors.affiliation: European Commission, Joint Research Centre, Institute for Environment and Sustainability, Via E. Fermi 2749, I-21027 Ispra, VA, Italy. Electronic address: panos.panagos@jrc.ec.europa.eu.
authors.forename: Panos
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Panagos
authors.affiliation: Environmental Geosciences, University of Basel, Switzerland.
authors.forename: Katrin
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Meusburger
authors.affiliation: European Commission, Joint Research Centre, Institute for Environment and Sustainability, Via E. Fermi 2749, I-21027 Ispra, VA, Italy.
authors.forename: Cristiano
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Ballabio
authors.affiliation: European Commission, Joint Research Centre, Institute for Environment and Sustainability, Via E. Fermi 2749, I-21027 Ispra, VA, Italy.
authors.forename: Pasquale
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Borrelli
authors.affiliation: Estación Experimental de Aula Dei-Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (EEAD-CSIC), Zaragoza, Spain.
authors.forename: Santiago
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Beguería
authors.affiliation: Institute of Hydraulics and Rural Water Management, University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences, Vienna, Austria.
authors.forename: Andreas
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Klik
authors.affiliation: UCD Dooge Centre for Water Resources Research, University College Dublin, Ireland.
authors.forename: Anna
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Rymszewicz
authors.affiliation: Department of Meteorology, Nicosia, Cyprus.
authors.forename: Silas
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Michaelides
authors.affiliation: Department of Agroecology, Aarhus University, Denmark.
authors.forename: Preben
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Olsen
authors.affiliation: Meteorological and Hydrological Service, Zagreb, Croatia.
authors.forename: Melita Perčec
authors.initials: MP
authors.lastname: Tadić
authors.affiliation: Finnish Meteorological Institute, Finland.
authors.forename: Juha
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Aalto
authors.affiliation: Hungarian Meteorological Service, Budapest, Hungary.
authors.forename: Mónika
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Lakatos
authors.affiliation: National Meteorological Administration, Bucharest, Romania.
authors.forename: Alexandru
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Dumitrescu
authors.affiliation: Institute of Soil Science, Agrotechnology and Plant Protection, Sofia, Bulgaria.
authors.forename: Svetla
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Rousseva
authors.affiliation: European Commission, Joint Research Centre, Institute for Environment and Sustainability, Via E. Fermi 2749, I-21027 Ispra, VA, Italy.
authors.forename: Luca
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Montanarella
authors.affiliation: Environmental Geosciences, University of Basel, Switzerland.
authors.forename: Christine
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Alewell