Dear Dr. Valler,

Thank you for submitting your manuscript “Impact of different estimations of the background-error covariance matrix on climate reconstructions based on data assimiliation” to “Climate of the Past”, and for your response to the two reviewers’ comments. Based on the reviewers’ comments and your responses I would like to invite you to resubmit a revised version of the manuscript, where your responses to the reviewers’ comments are implemented. Please make it visible where you have done what changes in the revised manuscript. I will likely ask for a second opinion from the reviewers after receiving the revised manuscript. Thanks again for submitting your manuscript to CP.

Best regards,
Bjørg Risebrobakken
Editor, Climate of the Past

Dear Dr. Valler and co-authors,

Thank you for submitting a revised version of your manuscript “Impact of different estimations of the background-error covariance matrix on climate reconstructions based on data assimilation,” addressing the reviewers concerns. I’m pleased to confirm that the paper will be accepted for publication in Climate of the Past.

Sincerly,
Bjørg Risebrobakken
Editor Climate of the Past