Dear Han Linderholm and co-authors,

Your paper submitted to Climate of the Past has now completed the discussion phase. During discussion it received comments from two reviewers, an additional short comment and review by the Data Stewardship team working on the 2k Special Issue. The comments provided by you to these reviews appear to be appropriate, so I would encourage you and your co-authors to now prepare a revised manuscript.

In preparing your revised manuscript please pay particular attention to the concerns of reviewer #2, particularly in relation to the framing of you paper. Also as noted by the data stewardship team, some of the time series used are derived from an earlier study where original records were truncated. As far as is possible, please use the original full-length time series and where this isn’t possible please look at ways that readers can be alerted to details that the archived data is parts of a longer original timeseries.

In your revised submission please include a link where the data will be archived, along with a copy of the files that you intend to archive so that these can also be checked for completeness.

I look forward to receiving your revised manuscript.

Sincerely,
Nerilie

Dear Hans Linderholm and co-authors,

Thank you for submitting your revised manuscript to Climate of the Past. I have reviewed the revisions made, and have also received advice from the data stewardship team. My assessment is that the paper is improved, but that there are still some revisions needed prior to the paper being accepted for publication. Please see details below for my editorial comments and comments from the data stewardship team to guide these revisions.

I look forward to seeing a revised manuscript in due course. Please also include a response to the comments below in your revised submission.

Sincerely,
Nerilie



Selection criteria: Selection criteria are given on page 27, but it isn’t clear how that relates to records from table 3 that were not used. For example, it is unclear to me why the Greenland ice core accumulation records aren’t used, but the Greenland lamina records are. Also, the accumulation records and lamina records are – I believe – essentially the same thing and a consistent terminology should be used. Both are derived by measuring the annual layers in ice cores.

Model results: the paper uses results from just 3 models, but there isn’t any explanation as to why only these three models were used? There are 9 different models available that ran last millennium + historical simulations for CMIP3.

Please review text, figures and tables to ensure consistency in age representations. For example just across the figures “years CE”, “BC/AD”, CE/BCE”, and “Time” are all used.

Some of the figures need to be tidied up in their labelling. Please check all figures for completeness of presentation, and in particular ensure that figures 4, 5 and 11 are revised to improve labelling and

Ensure that δ18O (and other similar terms) use the “delta” symbol rather than just “d”

Amongst the author team please carry out a thorough proof read of the manuscript. There are many typos that should be corrected in the revised manuscript.

The data stewardship team have also examined the revised manuscript and have the following comments:

The authors are making progress on their data management, but more work is needed before the paper is publishable. There remain many errors and issues with the data, which makes it difficult to review the data stewardship currently. The figure numbers are mixed up (mismatches in several places), citations to several datasets in Table 3 are incorrect, some datasets lack basic metadata, and a plan for long-term archival of some of the newly available data has not been identified (the excel file posted on the Wix.com site is not sufficient). In response to the data-review team's comment #5 regarding the use of the 850 AD truncated datasets (and as we discussed below), the authors say that "the original data sources are now given", but this does not appear to be the case? Before digging into a review, it would be helpful if the authors would correct obvious errors/ incorrect figure numbers/ incorrect citations and also prepare a more permanent open-access archive (e.g. ncdc palaeoclimate archive) for the newly available data.

Dear Hans Linderholm and co-authors,

Thank you for submitting your revised manuscript to Climate of the Past. In light of the revisions that have been made I am pleased to now be able to accept your paper for publication.

Sincerely,
Nerilie