Dear Dr. Lee,
Following the referees’ comments, and after reading your answers to the referees, I found that your manuscript needs a substantial revision. You and your co-authors are presenting important data showing the age scale of the RICE ice core (Antarctica) that will provide fundamental climate reconstruction for the Ross Sea region and these data and the related manuscript merit publication but there are some arguments that need to be addressed before acceptance.
The manuscript needs to be restructured, shortened as suggested by referee 1. The section dealing with the methane variability should be removed and the paper should concentrate more on the dating issue. Please, check also the figures, there were some comments on some of them (please, refer to the referees' comments). The abstract and conclusions should be revised accordingly. But most importantly there is a problem raised by the referees on the dD data since you are not showing them in the figures, but you are using them to derive the temperature estimates for the delta age calculations.
So, I encourage you to submit a revised manuscript which will be sent again to one of the referees.
Please, in your revision also add in the Data Availability section a proper data citation, with a DOI or a web link to the database (to be provided on paper acceptance) for all the data used in this study, as well as the codes.

Dear Dr. Lee,
The referee 2 found your manuscript acceptable after minor revisions BUT ONLY if you will include the dD data. However, apart from the fundamental issue to include in this manuscript the dD data there are still some small questions that must be answered. These include adding a new plot of d15N and CH4 data versus depth, some clarification on the role of thermal against gravitation effects on d15N data, some references to be added but also some important points regarding the cut-bubble effect correction to be applied on your TAC data and some more explanation text on the solubility correction factors as suggested by the referee. Please, refer to reviewer’s comments.
Please also check carefully the referee’s comment on “the abrupt decrease in δ15N-N2 at 12.38 ka” at L29. Isn’t it at 14.71 ka?”
Pay also attention to the abstract, it should represent the new manuscript version and check carefully the correctness of the Supplementary Data provided.
I encourage you to answer to all the issues raised above and submit a revised version of the manuscript that includes all referee’s comments. However, the paper will not be accepted for publication unless the dD data will be included.

Dear Dr. Lee,
Please the following technical corrections are need (I am referring to the pdf of the manuscript version 5):
1) In several part of the manuscript you state that the ice core length is 763 m except at page 2 line 2 in the Introduction. Please, may you check?
2) Page 2, lines 3-4: absolute age markers …. Are you referring only to volcanic ash layers? I do not think so ….. They should be sulphate volcanic peaks and in case also ash layer …. Please modify.
3) Page 6, line 3: I would add also here that the Antarctic dN changes are mostly associated with changes in gravitational separation (see comment from Referee 2).
4) Page 6, line 13. This figure 3 rather than 5. Please modify.
5) Page 13, line 5: it seems that at the end you did not modify this (see referee comment): the date is not 12.38 ka but 14.71 ka. Please change.
6) Page 13, lines 20-22: the sentence starting with “The timing … “ is not clear. You are referring to the dust record of Taylor Dome ….. describe what happened in the dust record of Taylor…. Otherwise it is not clear.
7) Data availability: when the paper will be finally accepted please add a link where the data will be archived.
8) Page 37: the caption of figure 8 is not correct: b) is methane, c) is Annual Layer Thickness, d) is Lock-in-Depth and e) is accumulation rate … Please modify.

Dear Dr. Lee,
Please the following technical corrections are need (I am referring to the pdf of the manuscript version 5):
1) In several part of the manuscript you state that the ice core length is 763 m except at page 2 line 2 in the Introduction. Please, may you check?
2) Page 2, lines 3-4: absolute age markers …. Are you referring only to volcanic ash layers? I do not think so ….. They should be sulphate volcanic peaks and in case also ash layer …. Please modify.
3) Page 6, line 3: I would add also here that the Antarctic dN changes are mostly associated with changes in gravitational separation (see comment from Referee 2).
4) Page 6, line 13. This figure 3 rather than 5. Please modify.
5) Page 13, line 5: it seems that at the end you did not modify this (see referee comment): the date is not 12.38 ka but 14.71 ka. Please change.
6) Page 13, lines 20-22: the sentence starting with “The timing … “ is not clear. You are referring to the dust record of Taylor Dome ….. describe what happened in the dust record of Taylor…. Otherwise it is not clear.
7) Data availability: when the paper will be finally accepted please add a link where the data will be archived.
8) Page 37: the caption of figure 8 is not correct: b) is methane, c) is Annual Layer Thickness, d) is Lock-in-Depth and e) is accumulation rate … Please modify.

Please, add the following modifications, technical corrections:
-Page 2, line 27: change "an" before Monte Carlo with "a".
-Page 4, line 31: may you check the citation Edwards et al. (in prep), also in the Reference. If not published, may you use another?
-Page 11, line 12: is there any alternative to the citation Clemens-Sewall? in case, also in the References. Moreover, perhaps it should be moved to the line 19. May you check?
-Page 16, line 16: add also dD data in "Data availability section".
-Page 32: please update the caption of figure 2!
-Page 33: please update the caption of figure 3!