Dear Dr. Ekaykin,
I am pleased to inform you that your manuscript will be accepted for publication in Climate of the Past after moderate revisions and taking into consideration the referees’ comments. Apart from minor suggestions there are two main comments that have been addressed by the referee 1 (D. Divine), regarding the statistical approach used in the manuscript for determining the isotope/temperature gradient and a second comment, also addressed by the second reviewer (E. Thomas), about the influence of the different moisture origin of the precipitation of the inland versus coastal sites in the studied area.
Figure 1 and figure 5 should be improved as suggested. In the author response to reviewer 1, the new version for figure 1 should be further improved since some site names (for example NVFL-1 and NVFL-3) are not distinguishable and the symbols seem too small.
Moreover, the reviewer suggested that an improvement of the style of the English by a native speaker should be desirable.
Sincerely
Barbara Stenni

Dear Dr. Ekaykin,
please there are some technical corrections that should be addressed:
-the citation Jones et al., in press should be modified throughout the whole text and in the References, in Jones et al., 2016 since the paper has been published.
-The citation PAGES_2k_network, 2013 should be modified throughout the whole text and in the References, in PAGES 2k Consortium, 2013.
In different places of the text there are commas for separating decimals instead of dots. Please, modify.
Moreover, the manuscript should be revised by a native English speaker.
All my best, Barbara Stenni