Dear authors,

Thank you for your responses to the comments posted during the interactive discussion. As you would have seen, all the comments were positive and only minor revisions have been requested.

Please proceed to upload a revised version of the manuscript.

Steven Phipps
Handling Topical Editor

Dear authors,

Thank you for submitting a revised version of your manuscript.

Both referees were clearly very positive about the manuscript, and requested only minor revisions. I have now carefully reviewed the revised manuscript, as well as your responses to the referees’ comments. I consider that the manuscript is very nearly ready for publication. However, I have some scientific and technical comments that I would like you to address first.

Scientific comments

1. You acknowledge, correctly, at page 8, lines 21-24 that values of kappa greater than 10 m a-1 K-1 may be too large. However, from Figure 3b, it appears to be the case that a value equal to 10 m a-1 K-1 is also too large, as the ice sheet does not return to its original size in this case either. It therefore appears to be the case that the paragraph should be revised to replace “strictly larger” at line 21 with “larger than or equal to”.

2. This also influences the overall conclusions of the manuscript, such as are stated in the final sentence of the abstract. Even if a value of 10 m a-1 K-1 is acceptable, than your simulations only support a sea level contribution of ~8m from the AIS. If a value of 10 m a-1 K-1 is deemed to be too large as well, then your simulations only support a sea level contribution of ~6m from the AIS. Please revise the Abstract, Discussion and Conclusions accordingly.

I suggest that, in the Abstract, you replace “almost 15 m” with the equivalent value from your simulation for kappa = 7 m a-1 K-1. In the Discussion and Conclusions you should then discuss the sea level contributions for kappa = 10 and 15 m a-1 K-1, but state that your simulations do not support such large contributions, as your model does not produce realistic behaviour when such large values are used.

3. Please clarify what anomalies are shown in Figure 7 and how they are calculated. For example, the caption states “Simulated ice volume anomaly between 80 ka BP and 15 ka BP”, but the time axis only begins at 75 ka BP. Are the anomalies calculated relative to the state at 75 ka BP? In this case, why does the volume return to exactly zero for all simulations at 15 ka BP, even though this is not consistent with the data shown in Figure 5? It would also be helpful to include horizontal lines for ΔSL as well as for ΔIce volume, as it is currently very hard to read sea level changes from this figure.

Technical comments

* P2, L16: its response → response of the AIS.

* P2, L18: Please remove the word “intriguing”, as it is an unnecessary value statement.

* P3, L9: hint to → hint at.

* P4, L13: Is “proper of” a typographical error? I don’t understand this sentence.

* P7, L13-14: Please merge these two very short sentences into a single sentence.

* P7, L18: happens → happen.

* P8, L4: The lead author of the reference is “Pedro” not “dePedro”.

* P8, L12: temperatures → temperature.

* P9, L10: This sentence now begins “The model is forced through a forcing method ...”, which is very awkward wording. I suggest “The model is forced using a method which ...”.

* P9, L15: discharges → discharge.

* Figure 2, caption: extension → extent.

* Figure 3, caption: I suggest adding “(β)” after “Millennial-scale forcing index” for consistency with the text.

Please do not hesitate to contact me if you have any questions regarding any of these comments.

Steven Phipps
Handling Editor

Dear authors,

Thank you for making the requested revisions to the manuscript. I am now happy to accept it for publication.

Steven Phipps
Handling Editor