After careful scrutiny of the manuscript, the reviews and the comments I recommend a series of technical revisions prior to the publication of the submission by Willett et al. These recommendations have been discussed with the EiC and the handling editor in light of the controversiality of the submission.

A few comments from my side first to set up the scene.

1- The manuscript has a extremely valuable contents that could benefit a large readership. This is an exceptional contribution.
2- The manuscript, the comments and the answers are extremely long and very technical. It reduces the readership to a few experts in the field.
3- The texts are polarized and inflammatory at places, unnecessarily.


The main and controversial questions that lead to the scientific disagreement are 1) wether there has been a recent global change in exhumation and erosion rates and 2) if there is an unbiased method to quantify an acceleration of these processes with sufficient resolution.

Both questions are exceptionally important and relevant to a large audience of Earth scientists. Interestingly, the parties involved in the argument include some of the most prominent researchers in the relevant domains, those who can lead the field of tectonic-geomorphology towards a better understanding of these key questions. The manuscript and the comments, without any doubt, include fundamental, new and innovative contributions, both in terms of methodology and geological consequences. Concomitantly, most of the contributions are mixed with unfortunate antagonistic conjectures. At last I want to raise the fact that modern scientific contributions should be replicable AND should be critically scrutinized by peers. Both the journal platform and the availability of the codes are laudable in those respects.

I therefore suggest recommend the following changes to the Willett et al. submission which are needed before it can be accepted for publication in ESurf:

1- Present the methodology and the extremely valuable assessment of its performance and limitations with a large audience in mind. Discuss the potential of the method to answer the geological questions at stake. List the results. Suggest an interpretation. Avoid any antagonistic statement. Please consider making the structure of the paper clear – perhaps by having an executive summary at the start with a bullet pointed list of the major areas covered (which should each have a clear sub-heading). This will all help the readability of the paper.

2- In a separate document or chapter, in the light of your contributions, refute the arguments of Schildgen et al. This can be remain very technical and specific. This could most easily be done in the form of ‘supplementary material’.

3- Finally, propose a benchmarking framework to test both the method and the geological hypotheses. Further research endeavors should work towards providing the relevant data and adapted methodological tools. The community and the society at large can only benefit from such an enterprise. This should be a clearly labelled and sub-headed section which readers can easily find.

I will consider the manuscript after formal changes.

I commend the authors for their efforts.

Thanks for attending to all the required changes, and for engaging so fully with a protracted and sometimes difficult reviewing process.