CO Editor

Suggestions for revision or reasons for rejection

he authors provided a detailed response to the reviewers comments and improved the manuscript with regard to several, but not all comments of the reviewers. In my view the authors did not taken into account the revieweres comments on the statistical methods (raised not only by me) satisfactorily.
I appreciate the attempts to examine potential processes that may help to explain the correlation results, but I think this needs more careful interpretation than the authors provided.
Therefore I still ask for major revision before publication.

General comments

1. The description of the background of Arctic-midlatitude linkages and possible physical
relationships between Arctic climate change and midlatitude weather
and climate has been improved, but still needs some revision to avoid sketchy physical explanations and inconsistencies. To illustrate this, I give two examples here:

(a) The paragraph L59-L75 is difficult to follow. I would ask for a better and more systematic view on the studies on Arctic-midlat linkages considering that the suggested processes depend on season, geographical region and other impacts.

(b) The authors claimed "Common supposition is that sea ice declines are primarily responsible for amplified Arctic tropospheric warming" (L62) In my understanding, that is not the case. There are various feedback processes, not only the ice-albedo feedback, which contribute to amplified warming in the Arctic. These are feedback effects associated with temperature, water vapour and clouds. Some studies suggest that temperature feedbacks are the main contributors to Arctic amplification.

2. I can accept that the authors did not apply the more demanding criterion of reproducibility. But still, the authors tested the Nullhypothesis of no correlation only. I think, this needs to be expanded by, at least, taking into account the reduction of degrees of freedom due to autocorrelation and also by estimating the confidence intervalls of the correlation coefficients. Furthermore, I suggest to include the discussion of detrended correlation analysis.

3. To follow the discussion and the conclusion, maps of the partial correlation coefficients(for AO/NAO and SCA influence) have to be shown.

4. I appreciate the new section 3.3, but the shown figures need more careful interpretation. E.g., the authors claimed at L242-244 " The annual evolution of 500 hPa height differences at 60°N shows that the positive temperature anomaly at the Greenland sector shifts towards east during the next seasons, reaching to Scandinavia/Baltic Sea region in summer (Figure 5)." I only see an eastward shift until spring, afterwards there is an interruptions, indicated by the negative differences around May at 0-40degrees E.

5. Another example for sketchy physical statements: L248 "There is a large inertia in the atmosphere causing lag effects." Typical atmospheric time-scale is about 10-14 days. For lag correlation with 3 or more months, other processes may play a role. Such processes have to be discussed.

6. L308: The mechanism, proposed by Wu et al., 2013, has to be explained.

7. Conclusions: 5 findings are given, but I do not find evidence for second, third and forth findings (L322-330) in the manuscript.

Minor comment

Wu et a., 2013 is not included in the references of the manuscript.

RC1: 'Reviewer comment', Anonymous Referee #1, 27 Apr 2017

AC1: 'Answers to referee 1', Liisi Jakobson, 23 Jun 2017

RC2: 'MS No.: esd-2017-37 Review', Anonymous Referee #2, 04 May 2017

AC2: 'Answers to referee 2', Liisi Jakobson, 23 Jun 2017

RC3: 'Review of 'Atmospheric teleconnections between the Arctic and the Baltic Sea regions' by Liisi Jakobson, Erko Jakobson, Piia Post, and Jaak Jaagus (esd-2017-37)', Anonymous Referee #3, 16 May 2017

AC3: 'Answers to referee 3', Liisi Jakobson, 23 Jun 2017

RC4: 'Review', Anonymous Referee #4, 17 May 2017

AC4: 'Answers to referee 4', Liisi Jakobson, 23 Jun 2017

Interactive discussion

Peer-review completion