A response to 'Trends in tropical tree growth: reanalysis confirms earlier findings'.

We recently demonstrated that growth trends from tree rings from Van Der Sleen et al. (Nature Geoscience, 8, 2015, 24) and Groenendijk et al. (Global Change Biology, 21, 2015, 3762) are affected by demographic biases. In particular, clustered age distributions led to a negative bias in their growth trends. In a response, they challenge our analysis and present an alternative correction approach. We here show that their arguments are incorrect and based on misunderstanding of our analysis and that their alternative approach does not work.