Dear authors,

Thank you for your responses to the reviewer comments posted on CPD site. After examining the reviews and your replies it is obvious that both reviewers are generally favorable to the publication of your paper in Climate of the Past. I will therefore encourage you to submit a revised version taking into account carefully all the comments.

Moreover, I have a small additional remark regarding the naming of the different climate episodes shown in the speleothem record. Could you replace the term “climate stage” by “climate event” or “climate period”. The term “climate stage” is confusing here because “Stage 1, 2, 3 and 4” are generally used for the climate periods defined in the marine isotope records of the Pleistocene and not in the Holocene that also corresponds to stage 1. In fact the climate period 4 is not labelled in the figures. Why? We expect that it corresponds to the upper part of the record but it is necessary to point it on the figure as it is defined in the text and table. If not why do you defined a fourth event?

Waiting after seeing your revised manuscript.

Sincerely yours

Nathalie Combourieu-Nebout

Dear authors,

Thank you for sending your revised manuscript so rapidely. After having had a look on this version of your manuscript, I see that lot of requested corrections have been carefully done which have substantially amended your manuscript. However some additional complements and explanations are still needed and remain to do now concerning few items in order to improve more your revised manuscript:
1 Following the request of reviewer 1, you added a figure with hendy test and two sentences to explain your interpretation of this test and the implications for your results. I think that this is a bit short. You have to really explain more what the hendy test is. This can be done either in the manuscript text or in the supplement. You must do it.

In addition, could you please detailed the figure 1 caption of the supplement that is minimalist in your file? The figure must be readable alone by the reader even if they are not specialists of speleothem data. Definitively one sentence is not sufficient as you have lot of elements to explain on this figure. Looking on the figure, reader does not understand what represent the three colored numbers and curves. Could you please also choose a different way to show that oxygen isotopes are in the upper part of the figure and carbon ones in the lower part. Explanations about the Hendy text may be written also below the figure 1 as said before.

2 You compare your data with other sites in the figure. It is very interesting to understand the determinism of the rapid climate events. Nevertheless I would like seeing more comparisons between the different records in the text. For example, reviewer 2 told you that in Corchia cave 4.2 event did not appear clearly through oxygen isotope. You have to take more into account this remark and add sentences to discuss this fact in the text comparing with your record in which you have it. In that way, comparisons with other proxies generally had to be more detailed in the discussion because you have a record that represents an important contribution in the Mediterranean schema.
Waiting after the new version of your manuscript
With my best regards

Nathalie Combourieu-Nebout