Dear Magdalena,

After a careful review of your response to the two reviewers' comments, there are a few remaining issues that I wish for you to address. I have carefully checked the conclusions, in particular, for proper grammar, but I also strongly recommend that you have a native English speaker check the remainder of the manuscript to ensure proper English is used throughout.

In particular, I ask that you address a few of the comments of reviewer 1 that I feel were not sufficiently addressed in your reply and make a couple of changes to the figures as explained below.

After addressing my comments, please upload a revised manuscript and a list of responses to my comments below.

My recommendations are as follows:


Regarding your responses to reviewer #1:

Reviewer #1 suggests a comparison to the records produced by Wollenburg: The 2004 Wollenburg paper has a site in the Barents Sea that I do not think is “too far” as you state, particularly in light of your statement that “we believe that the presented data show the general climatic/oceanographic trends in the eastern Arctic”. Also you compare to site NP94-51 which seems even farther away. Hence saying that another site in the Barents Sea is too far away seems inconsistent. Please address by briefly comparing your data to the Wollenburg study—in a figure is probably best—unless a better reason to ignore this study is given.

Regarding the correction (or lack thereof) for a vital effect in d18O of E. excavatum: Please include a brief statement in the text that no correction was made given the lack of a consistent offset observed in previous studies and cite two as an example.

Reviewer comment: “what is missing is a critical discussion of why this new core is so important given all the previous studies.” Please address.


Reviewer 2:

Regarding your question about Figure 5/6, is it possible to combine them into one landscape figure?


Additional comments:

General orientation: Svalbard is not denoted on your map. Perhaps include on the inset to Figure 1? Otherwise the general reader does not understand all your references to Svalbard.

Conclusions, line 596: “with periodical sea-ice cover limiting the drift of icebergs”, please change to “with sea-ice cover episodically limiting the drift of icebergs”.

Line 597: “peaks of…increase” does not make sense. Change to “three warming events” or “three peaks in temperature”

Lines 608-9: Please change to “…on land, and the presence of AW in the deeper part of Storfjordrenna.”

Lines 609-610: Please change “has been characterized also by” to “experienced”

Figure 8a. Please make labels on horizontal axis with consistent spacing, e.g., “2, 3, 4,” not "2, 3, 4.5”

Dear author,
The regular editor of your paper, Dr. Dutton being on leave, I had the responsibility to take over, as co-editor in chief of Climate of the Past, the editorship. As I am not an expert in your field, I will rely on the reviewers decisions. To do so, I must select "Reconsider after major revisions" which means that I am asking the initial reviewer to look carefully at your revised version to help me deciding about the final status of your paper. I wish you will understand my decision which has nothing in theory against the paper.
All the very best and thank you once more for considering CP to publish your results.
denis-didier Rousseau
CP co-editor in chief

Dear authors,
Sorry to be late but I was waiting for a third review of your revised manuscript which wasn't provided. Therefore I wil not wait anymore as considering both reviews of your revised manuscript the new version appears acceptable. Please take care of the minor improvements that both reviewers did when reporting the revised version and provide Copernicus with an update version including these minor corrections.
Thank you once more for considering Climate of the Past as the platform publishing your results.
All the very best
denis-didier Rousseau
co-Editor in Chief Clim. Past