Dear Dr. Buchert,

Thank you for submitting interesting results of your work for publication in the Annales Geophysicae and for your very detailed answers to the referees’ comments. The referees found your paper as important contribution to the ionospheric research. However, as you already know, referees had some important objections to the present version of the manuscript, and this is a reason why I suggest a major revision. Please, consider carefully and discuss in the revised version of the manuscript all comments of the referees. Me and two referees will review the manuscript again.
If you are prepared to undertake the improvements required, please submit the revised manuscript as well as a list of changes or a rebuttal against each point, which is being raised when you submit the revised manuscript.

Kindest regards
Yours sincerely
D. Buresova

Dear Dr. Buchert,

I am pleased to say that after the second read both referees stated that the manuscript was significantly improved. The results of the theoretical analysis presented in the article are fairly important for the ionospheric community, as they provide answers to some unanswered questions in the field of magnetosphere-ionosphere coupling. I appreciate very much your work.
Currently a few technical corrections (listed below) remain to be made and the article will be published in Annales Geophysicae.
Thank you once again for choosing Annales Geophysicae for the publication of your results and wish you many valuable and inspiring scientific results in the future.
Best regards

Yours cordially
D. Buresova

Referee 1
There is just on item that caught my attention. The reference Park and Lühr (2020) should read Park, Yamazaki and Lühr (2020), see https://doi.org/10.1029/2019JA027694, 2020.
Referee 2
I still have a couple of minor notes, which don't require, I think, another review iteration:
a1) p. 7, Eq. (5): The minus sign should be dropped from the expression of J_S. Thus, both J_S and Eˆstar_S will have the same orientation, consistent with Figure 4.
a2) p. 7, Eq. (6) and L21: The *absolute value* of the Pedersen current is the same in both hemispheres (slight adjustment needed at L21), though the sign is different, because of the opposite orientations of the respective X axes. Thus, J_N=-J_S => J_N+J_S= ... = 0.
b) p.2, L33: I think collisions and ionospheric currents are most significant in the lower part of the 90-350 km altitude range, below some 150-200 km.
c) p. 13, L5: the describe => to describe; confirm Figure 1 => conform Figure 1 (?)