Dear authors,

According to your letter, it seems that you are ready to work hard on the revision of the manuscript, and that you actually propose meaningful suggestions to address the major concerns of both reviewers.
Considering that the revised manuscript will have a significantly different shape, I’m ready to invite you to submit a revised version, but it will be treated more or less like a new manuscript, i.e. I will seek for opinions of a couple of reviewers.

Best regards

Pierre Francus

Dear Authors,

We received 3 reviewers reports. They are all positive about your revised manuscript, and I also think that you made a good job at addressing the initial reviewers comments. Therefore, I recommend your paper for publication pending minor revisions.

Reviewer #3 made a very detailed and well-argued evaluation of your paper. Many comments are positive, yet reviewer #3 also made detailed suggestions to improve your introduction and your discussion. Please consider these suggestions carefully. If you do not follow these suggestions, please explain why you are not considering these. There are also many comments and suggestions on details of your manuscript that are worth considering.
Reviewer #4 and #2 made minor comments, please address them as well, especially the comment of reviewer #2 about lines 602-607.

I'm looking forward to receiving your revised manuscript.

Best Regards

Pierre Francus

Dear authors,
Thank you for this revised version of the manuscript and your clearly documented response. I read this response to the reviewer’s comments and think that you appropriately addressed or replied to most of them.

However, there are still a few items that I would like to see better addressed. They are listed below, and should be easy to address.

First, please use the CP template for submitting your manuscript (available here: https://www.climate-of-the-past.net/for_authors/manuscript_preparation.html), or add numbers to the sections and subsections.

Rev#2 on Fig3: I agree with reviewer 2 that you should consider to plot eroded data differently. I found not that easy to see the difference with other data. Making the figure larger would also make the figure more readable.

Rev #3 comment on Lines 117-131: Please point to one or several specific conceptual figures in the references that you cite in the Methods section. For example: (Figure z in Doe et al 2001).

Rev#3 comment on Line 117-141: Related to the above comment, your reply state that it is not necessary to outline the assumptions made in using microattols to reconstruct sea-level change. I believe you can provide one or two sentences to explain these concepts as Climate of the Past is not a specialized journal in sea-level reconstruction, and your paper is definitively out of the zone of expertise of many readers. Another option is to add something as a Supplement.

Rev#3 on Line 177: It is one thing to answer to this question in your reply, but I feel you should also add something in the text about this comment. It is quite simple to address.

Rev#3 on inferring GMSL: why don’t you write somewhere that your data are not suitable for calculating GMSL?

Rev#3 on Table 3: Why don’t you add a note in the table caption that the errors are included in the Mann et al paper?

Rev#3 on line 572: I also think you should specify “gradient in elevation” here, because even if you extensively discussed this above, it is not yet mentioned in the conclusion. Many readers only read parts of papers, and conclusion is one of the most popular parts. Your conclusion will gain in clarity and it is only 2 words to add.

Rev#3 on Fig3: There is obviously a problem of readability of this important figure. I understand that you prefer keeping the symbols, but there should be way to improve this figure. Making it larger as suggested above might be part of the solution but not only.

Rev#3 about Fig4: I guess your modification adds more confusion. I suggest writing: “Box plot of the HLC elevation measured in the Spermonde Archipelago; “n” indicates the number of living microattols that were surveyed on each island.”. You can easily add a (*) next to Tambakulu and Sanrobengi that you measured yourself (as opposite to Mann)

As for the suggestion of Reviewer #3 to restructuring the introduction, I understand that you changed an earlier version of the introduction according to previous reviewers recommendation and that it is difficult to reconcile reviewer’s #3 suggestion with earlier recommendation.

I'm looking forward reading the final version of your manuscript.

Best Regards

Dear Authors,

I would like to acknowledge that you worked very hard to improve this paper. Thank you for your collaboration and positive spirit throughout in this process. The paper is now ready to be published Climate of the Past, except that..... Supplemental material SM3 is not present in the archive. Could you please add this document?

Best wishes and thank you for submitting your work to Climate of the Past

Pierre Francus
Associate Editor