Dear authors,

We have now received the comments of all reviewers. Both reviewers made important comments about your manuscript that may be surely taken in consideration in a new version. Thank you for your detailed response to both reviewers and your propositions for changing your manuscript. You have now to send your revised manuscript to climate of the Past and I will be able to state on your document after reading your revised document. Then I will decicde if your paper need other reviews. However, I will probably send it again to two of the first reviewers as they asked to have a look on it again after corrections.

Best regards

Nathalie Combourie-Nebout

Dear authors,
I have read carefully all the comments of reviewers, your new version of the manuscript and the responses to reviewers you wrote.
You have amended your document and follow many requests from the three reviewers. Nevertheless some additional corrections are still needed before a complete acceptance of your manuscript.

My comments and requests are listed below:

1- It’s a pity that you do not be able to present charcoal analyses to reinforce your interpretation. I agree with the reviewers. Would it be possible to add something on that even preliminary data with personal communication or indication to a paper in progress? That will help a lot.

2- Generally I agree with the comments of all reviewers and especially with the comment 17 of Laura Sadori about your discussion. You have to demonstrate more in it and eventually to use additional data.

3- I also completely agree with the reviewer asking you to describe first the basin (geology and so on) before describing the vegetation, the organization of the vegetation being strongly dependent from the geomorphology. In addition could you develop what the reviewer requested about the fact that the present day vegetation is to date completely modified by Human around the site?
In fact, I do not understand why you separate the Padul area description from the description of the Sierra Nevada. You describe first an altitudinal belt organization and after that another one typical to Padul, what is the links between the two??? Perhaps you may indicate the altitudinal belts corresponding to the Padul area and underlines the changes comparing to the theoretical association of the related belt and why it is modified. It would be easier to imagine a true representation of the landscape of the studied area. And please simplify the description of what is found in the Padul area as there are lot of plants that are not distinguishable through pollen.

4- Would it be possible to have the indications of the AMS dates on the figure 3 and 4 to have an idea of the position of them? It would have been more pleasant to have first the pollen data versus depth to see the original data before having it in age or the have a reminder of the depth with the position of the datings on the diagram. Please .modify that.

5- In the text, you do not indicate the changes in sedimentation rates, only the general fork, and they are indicated in the figure only . It remains important to note that the SR decrease strongly after4 kyrs and re-increase in the ultimate upper part of the sequence. Have you an explanation of this SR changes? I have seen nothing in this part.

6- As reviewer 2, I do not see any increase in Mediterranean forest nor in Quercus alone during PA2. In this zone I see a slight increase in Cichorioideae and a stabilization of Quercus in its general decreasing trend associated to a maximum of Ericaceae and Botryococcus. Please change that.

7- You say that Botryococcus may be correlated to temperatures variations or I have not understand your discussion. I think it needs more explanations and I do not understand your response to reviewer 2 on that point.
Have you Cyanobacteria (AnaBaena for example) at the same time as Botryococcus to eventually reinforce the temperature effect? Generally Botryococcus increase indicates more increase in nutrient and partial increasing water level probably linked to more precipitation. For my part, in your record, I saw three phases: before 3kyr with low water level, between 3 kyrs and 1.5 kyr relatively high water level (increase in Botryococcus) and after 1.5 kyr general drying of the area and erosion? (decrease in Botryococcus and increase in Tilletia) with the area probably colonized by herbs and then by trees (probably planted by human??).
I think that you have to detail your demonstration to be more efficient concerning the links between your results and Bond events even if the climate probably may have a large influence (remember that coolings in Atlantic do not necessary mean coolings in Mediterranean but sometimes only aridity). Now I am not convinced by your correlations. For my part, I would prefer your remain moderate and discuss more about the increase and decrease water level correlated to different aridity events included into the general trend in aridity and perhaps linked to bond events. I agree with reviewer 2 and if you want to link all the curves you may also discuss the time lag that occurs between forest and Botryococcus and the fact that only few peaks are illustrated here. That’s evident you have an increase of Mediterranean forest at the same time (a pause in the general aridity trend) but it occurs delayed from the botryococcus increase. You have to explain that.
I am sure that your data are not artefact but I suggest to moderate your interpretations concerning the figure 7 and 6.

8- In figure 6 the scale of the different curves do not express the true representation of the different proxies. Here they are artificially enlarged especially those of Botryococcus. Please draw the palynological curves with the same scale and draw the Bond curve in a reasonable scale not so much enlarged too.

I think that my requests will not take so much time to be done and I am waiting after your response and new version of your manuscript.

Best regards,
Nathalie

Dear authors,

I had a look on your response and you corrections and I would like some additional amendments before a definitive acceptance of your manuscript.

The first point is what you say for figure 6. I do not agree with you. The scale is very important here as you base your demonstration on very low percentages lower that 10 % concerning the Botryococcus. Curves are too much magnified comparing to other curves (4 % of them represent 10 % of Mediterranean taxa.) and the curve of IRD has also to be restrained to reasonable proportions. The reader will probably see the same but he(she) see that in a reasonable presentation of the variations of the different proxies comparing to other data presented on the right of the figure. So I suggest you to moderate the scale of the pollen and IRD curves in figure 6. Please do that before acceptance. Thank you.

The second point concerns the charcoal data. I have understand what you say about the analyses in progress which are part of a master. In fact I do not ask you to publish any original data on charcoal analyses. What I propose to you to respond to two of the reviewers is only to place one or two sentences indicating tthat first preliminary data seem to confirm or not one or another point concerning the low impact of Human on the vegetation in the whole part of the diagram (up to 1500 yr) without detailing the data (writing name of the student and his professor, personal communication). As the man who drives this master is one co-author of your paper, such short amendment will be the best thing to do and it is really important for your paper to mention that in your discussion in order to reinforce the climate driving of your results as you point that in the abstract as one of the main results. You may also add the name of the student if necessary in the author list. Please add something like that in the discussion with the mention “personal communication”. Thank you

These minor changes will not take too many time to do. I am waiting after the new version of you manuscript.

with my best regards

Nathalie Combourieu-Nebout