The manuscript addresses a relevant topic and is in my opinion scientifically sound. The results are clearly presented. Apart from minor suggestions detailed below, my main concerns are:

- poor quality of the figures (maps): the maps are too small, with land boundaries difficult to visualise (particularly when covered by dark colours); for the maps in figures 5 to 8, the colour scale should have a label indicating what it is representing (ki).

- the physical interpretation of the results would significantly enhance the relevance and quality of the paper; an attempt to identify the regional climate systems associated to the identified patterns, and an interpretation of the patterns based on atmospheric transport processes would be beneficial.

Minor comments:

- lines 20 and 38: format of the cited reference

- line 26: maybe “behave”

- line 30: understandable

- line 54: purposes

- line 88: on land

- line 122: maybe add some detail on the two sub-sets here (e.g. the two periods, 1981-2000 an 2000-2020) so that the reader can follow the text without having to go immediately into the appendix

- caption of fig 4: maybe remove “traveled”; rephrase the last sentence, e.g. the dashed line represents the 2500 km distance.

- line 190: maybe rephrase the sentence: “ the lack of humidity could move from the ocean towards the continent”, as there is no data over the ocean… maybe something like from the coast towards inland… what would explain the distinct behaviour of the western Iberia coastal areas and Biscay/France coastal zones??