Dear Belinda, dear authors,

Thank you for your response to the three reviewers.
I have carefully read your manuscript, the reviewers’ comments and your response. I have come to the conclusion that your manuscript is an interesting and ultimately relevant paper for CP.

It appears that you intend to follow the remarks of the reviewers and produce corrections in your revised version. The tentative decision is to accept your corrected version with significant revisions. Overall I think the changes will result in a better outcome, and a version that would be suitable for CP. I will then examine the revised version and see whether it should be definitively accepted.

In addition to reviewers' requests, you will see below some additional remarks that I expect you take into account carefully in your manuscript. I am waiting after your corrected version.

Best regards

Nathalie Combourieu-Nebout
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However, your original manuscript needs significant modifications especially regarding the chronology before publication. I completely agree with the three reviewers.

There is lot of restriction on your age model. You have to be careful with your chronology and the presentation of data in age.
One solution is just to place the dates on the right of the diagram to have the chronological information (14C age and cal ages) on it. Reviewer 3 seems to prefer this way to show the chronology. If you choose this way, you may construct your diagram in depth.
If you really want to produce an age model and use it for drawing the diagram, it will be more reliable if you use a polynomial curve instead of the succession of straight lines joining the dates. Such a method is classically used to construct age model without excluding any dates.
You indicate in the response to reviewer 3 that the diagram is “plotted against time” but it is not evident in your figure that is a bit confusing. In my view, your diagram is plotted against depth with indications of ages that reader wants to know why you chose these ones. In fact, the age indication on the diagram are really strange. The reader does not know what they really represent, it is not really a scale but just a succession of ages (and not the previous ages measured in 14C) that are not regularly proposed without clear links to the values proposed for the depth scale!! Neither the depth scale nor the age scale are regular. So the reader does not understand what the main scale for your diagram is. You have to choose the depth or the age but the scale has to be drawn using an axis with regular steps of scale for the one you have chosen, the other being irregular.

It seems that there is a gaps in your diagram. it is what I presume seeing your diagram even if the scale is not regular. You mentioned that in the text. then, you have to add a white zone for these gaps and not place the sample in continuity. It is important to have a representation of these gaps on your schema especially if it not gaps due to the poorness of the sediment. Please explain more in the method and draw that on figures.

Other remarks:
In general, I think that your text could be reduced the text and that you could be more concise in several paragraphs.

Following the reviewer 2, you have to explain more
1- what is relevant in the sedimentology (citing a paper is not enough seeing the review 2 remark) and
2- why you choose to present charcoal in the way you use in your paper. This have to be done in the methods.

Concerning the figures:
I completely agree with C. Hunt, you have to find a way for your diagram to make them more readable. The figures are two little and the characters are unreadable.
Your legend are not sufficiently detailed. If you have plotted the diagram in age, please indicate that in the caption and in the text (methods). If you show the charcoal, please indicate the scale, the unit and how you have calculated the values.

What does the number 120 … represent ? is it percentage??? Concentration??? In the text you only indicate that you exclude the little charcoals but no indications are done about the calculation. Same remarks for the concentrations. I presume that it is in grains per grams of sediment. On your diagram you have several different units and scales and you must indicate that clearly.

Dear Belinda, dear authors,

Thank you for sending your corrections. I have carefully read your corrected manuscript. However, your revised manuscript needs additional modifications especially regarding what was previously requested by the reviewers and myself.

First, as previoulsy noted, the figures are two little and the characters are unreadable (See figure 5 and-6). Your figure captions are not sufficiently detailed especially for Fisg 4 to 6. You have to explained more what is represented and the scale unit of the different curves (ex: diagram versus depth or versus age? concentration per gram? per cm3? - % : calculated on the total sum or on a partial sum and for which curves if it changes in the same diagram ). See, for example, the concentration curve on fig 4 the charcoal, please indicate the scale, the unit and how you have calculated the values. In Fig 8 you have to explain all the acronyms not only MTCO but also Winterpr and summer pr.
Have another look on your figures and explain all terms and all what is necessary to understand each one.
Each figure and its caption can be readable alone without the text.

Regarding the problem of your age model.
You have to be careful with your chronology and the presentation of data, I do not seen a real changes neither in your age-depth schema nor in the diagram. You have not changed the age model. I would have appreciate you provide a new age model with a polynomial curve. Ok. Even it is not perfect your age model remains acceptable even if a polynomial curve would be largely better.
However, when I chose the minor corrections, I asked you to carefully do the changes on your figures and especially regarding the presentation of data. Some of the diagrams were not so readable or few details remain understandable and I propose solutions, especially regarding the scale of the drawings.
I see your new diagrams and figures. I conclude that you chose the depth scale representation for them. In that way, you have to respect a regular depth scale. This is not the case in your figures. A scale must not only indicate by the values but has to be shown also by little marks on a line at the left, pointing the position of the successive values and showing the regularity of the depth interval between marks. So please modify your diagrams in that way to obtain a regular depth scale in all the figures.
After that, you can indicate the position of the radiocarbon dates (in cal age if you want) on the extreme left with a little point or a bar (to see their exact positions) and the respective ages. If you want to indicate an additional chronology for your diagram, you have to add marks for your calculated ages from the age-depth model at the left of the column chronological scale to help the reader to see where they are precisely for reference to the depth scale and not only the values in approximate places!!! Please amend your figures in this way.
You have three gaps and in these gaps the scale is not respected. Why? It did not change your diagram to respect the depth scale for the gaps in your diagram. You must let the same space as in the other part of the diagram. If you follow my first comment, this can be corrected. The old gap is not really mentioned in the figures and the two others are related to two hiatus and represented by a twisty line in the figure. This is a bad way in my opinion to show the hiatus only with a twisty line and with the same pattern. You have to represent the three gaps by a blank, hatched or dotted space between the samples below and above the “hiatuses”. This will best represent them to the reader as well in depth (regarding the regular scale in all the diagram) and in duration (regarding to the calculated chronology).
In fact, you mention in your text that the first two gaps (940-890 cm and 680-600 cm) are related to “gaps occurring in the sediment extraction”. What does it mean? I think that it is problem in the core recovery. Could you add more precisions in the text? As these two gaps are related to the same problem, you have to represent the two with the same draw (hatched or blank zone). For the upper one (450-240), related to poorness in pollen, could you please choose another draw (dotted for example). In that way of representation, all useful information will be on your figures.

Regarding the text, I have seen the modifications that generally follow the reviewer request. I have only a last remark. You have a short paragraph named “age model” and later in the results part, a paragraph “sediment and chronology”. These two paragraphs may be gathered in a large one on sediment and chronology, the dates being used for the age model age model and then they do not be placed separately that in my opinion. You say that your chronology is in accordance with those of another site. You have to precise on which basis it is in accordance???.

These amendments need to be done to improve your manuscript before the final acceptance for publication in Climate of the Past.

I am waiting after your new version that will take into account these remarks.
Best regards

Nathalie Combourieu-Nebout