Dear Liviu Giosanand co-authors,

Your paper submitted to Climate of the Past has now completed the discussion phase. During discussion it received comments from three reviewers. The comments provided by you to these reviews appear to be appropriate, so I would encourage you and your co-authors to now prepare a revised manuscript.

In preparing your revised manuscript please pay particular attention to the concerns of reviewer #1, particularly regarding the climate-society links, which clearly adds to the importance of the study, and where I feel more effort than provided in the response should be put. Also, I agree that more information regarding the Harappan civilisation would be beneficial, and adding a text box seems a good way to do that. Finally, as suggested by reviewer #1, the discussion/conclusion section could be better structured. Personally I prefer a short conclusion section where the research questions/hypoteses in the introduction are answered, but at least it should be easy to navigate this particular part of the paper.

I also invite you to carefully familiarise yourselves with CPs data policy (https://www.climate-of-the-past.net/about/data_policy.html), especially the "Statement on the availability of underlying data" section.

I look forward to receiving your revised manuscript.

Sincerely,
Hans

Dear Dr Giosan
As you see from the reviewers reports, they suggest accept with some minor corrections. I agree with their comments, and will formally accept the manuscript when I receive a revised manuscript.

I look forward to the revised (final) version

Good luck
Hans Linderholm

Dear Dr Giosan
Thank you for the revised manuscript. I will accept it as soon as you have added the following sections that are required : Data availability, author contribution and competing interests (see https://www.climate-of-the-past.net/for_authors/manuscript_preparation.html):

Data sets: Authors are requested to follow our data policy including
- the deposit of research data (i.e. the material necessary to validate the research findings) that correspond to journal articles in reliable FAIR-aligned data repositories that assign persistent identifiers (preferably digital object identifiers (DOIs)). Suitable repositories can be found at https://www.re3data.org/;
- the proper citation of data sets in the text and the reference list (see section references);
- the inclusion of a statement on how their underlying research data can be accessed. This must be placed in the section "Data availability" at the end of the manuscript before the acknowledgements. If the data are not publicly accessible, a detailed explanation of why this is the case is required (e.g. applicable laws, university and research institution policies, funder terms, privacy, intellectual property and licensing agreements, and the ethical context of the research);
- the provision of unrestricted access to all data and materials underlying reported findings for which ethical or legal constraints do not apply.

Author contribution: Authors are required to add a section "Author contribution" before the acknowledgements in which the contributions of all co-authors are briefly described. Example: "AA and BB designed the experiments and CC carried them out. DD developed the model code and performed the simulations. AA prepared the manuscript with contributions from all co-authors." We recommend using the taxonomy of CASRAI's CRediT definitions of contributor roles.

Competing interests: Declaration of all potential conflicts of interest is required by Copernicus Publications as this is an integral aspect of a transparent record of scientific work. Please see our competing interests policy.
If there are no competing interests in their submitted manuscripts, authors should state: "The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest."
If there are possible conflicts of interest, authors must state what competing interests are relevant to the submitted work: "Author A is a member of the editorial board of the journal. Author B has received research funding from Company Y. Author C is a member of committee Z."

Regards
Hans