Dear author,

The reviewers have made very stong comments on your manuscript and the validity of some of your analyses. Your answers suggest that you can improve the manuscript and take their concerns into consideration. I therefore encourage you to submit a revised version of the manuscript. Please make sure you improve the description part of it and that we better understand the limitations in the analyses and what we learn from them. A complete response to the reviewer comments and how they are implemented in the new manuscript is also requested.
Best regards

Pascale Braconnot

Two reviewers have analyzed the revised version of your manuscript. One of them found that you properly responded to the major remarks and propose only small technical corrections. The second one on the contrary still finds that the test is too vague in most places and that additional information should be provided on the different behavior of the regional models with respect to the driving GCM.
My own reading is that the manuscript still needs some improvement, which should easily be done. I propose thus a new round of revision. I recommend that you reduce the lengthy discussion of the correlations so that we better capture the main points. Several places appear quite descriptive. Section 4.1 should be summarized, because some of the subsections do not tell what we should conclude of the description. Make sure the dynamics you try to capture with the correlations is clearly stated in the different paragraphs. Also the fact that the regional models behave differently than the global ones and the reanalyses is a key aspects that should be discussed in only one place. It still not entirely clear why we should find similar behavior for the period covered by the reanalyses that is affected by greenhouse gas emissions and the millennium dominated by other forcings. The point on deforestation is clear but not the possible effect of the other forcings.
I hope you’ll be able to provide a revised version rapidly.
Best regards
Pascale Braconnot

Dear authors,

Thank you for the revised version of you manuscript. Before I finally accept it for publication I will ask for further text reduction that should be easily done. The objective is to further reduce by 1,5 pages so as to focus on the interesting statements of the paper. Here are the places I suggest to shorten.
1. Abstract : You should summarize line 5 to 19 so as to keep only the important messages about the simulations and the results
2. P3 l93-95. There are two different ideas in this long sentence. Two sentences would be better
3. In several places small words like thus, however or nevertheless are not necessary and could be omitted to improve the clarity of the text. This is the case for example p4 line 104 for Nevertheless (there is already a However just before). A native English could help on this.
4. P5 and 6 could be reduced to one page and table 1 and 2. I know the text was enlarged to fulfill the request of a reviewer, but in the present version I find that there are redundancy between the introduction of section 2 and section 2.1. Since you do not provide all the details in section 2.3 on the regional models, you should focus in section 2.1 on the simulations themselves and have the details about the resolution etc of the models in Table 1. I would thus recommend to shorten the introduction but just tell you’ll consider 5 different simulations and global and regional reanalyzes, and move model names and references in section 2.1
5. Section 2.1 and 2.2 could be merged so as to focus on the simulations and not on the model themselves (but with a table summarizing model resolution and references.
6. P8 is the information redundant between lines 240 and 265? This is unclear to me.
7. P9 section 4. The long introduction is not needed and could be reduced. I would suggest to suppress the first paragraph, moving the ref to table 3 in the second paragraph. We do not need too much explanation here, because you already presented the method just above in section 3.
8. You should move line 390 to 295 after section 4.2 title.
9. P13 line 425 unclear. May be tell that is is CCLM and MM5 or regional simuations
10. P 13 line 428 the two instead of both? (please check with a English specialist).
11. P15 line 496. May be suppress “in theory”. I am not sure it should be, because it also depends on the nature of forcing if it is a SW or a LW forcing.
12. P&6 line 423 we do not understand which results you refer to. SO please indicate them more clearly
13. Legends of figures 3, 4, 7, 8. Please write them following what is done for figure 5.
Best regards
Pascale Braconnot

Dear Authors,

Thank you for the revision of your manuscript. I am now happy to accept it for publication in climate of the past.
Best regards
Pascale Braconnot