Both reviewers comment on the need for additional terrestrial records of past climate, and the potential value that records like this could have for improving our understanding of climate changes in this region.

Both reviewers have provided a suite of constructive comments for improving the manuscript (including the annotations by Reviewer 1). Some of these are relatively minor e.g. typos, or change of phrasing. However, the reviewers raise important concerns which limit acceptance of the results and interpretations being presented by the authors.

Both reviewers comment on the need to significantly increase the detail of the descriptions of the proxies that are being applied. The authors currently have a brief introduction, and then later (section 4.1) provide the overview of the proxy interpretations. The reviewers sought to move section 4.1 into the introduction, which the authors note they can do in a revised version. However, neither reviewer was satisfied by the depth of discussion about the proxies even in section 4.1. Reviewer 2 gives a large number of references where the authors could both explain the rationale of the approach, but also make much more detailed and nuanced interpretations of the data. The combined comments of the reviewers indicate that work is required to justify both the approach taken and the results generated. Furthermore, the existing discussion of the proxy data and its interpretations is not well connected to the modern lake system: both reviewers comment on the need to better understand how the lake works today, and what environmental factors might be at play which could impact the GDGTs (e.g. pH, salinity... as well as temperature).

Finally, both reviewers comment that although a presentation of other regional climate records is made in the final section of the Discussion, this is not discussed well: the causes of similarities and differences are not explained sufficiently to the reviewers. The manuscript provides an overview of patterns of change but does not dig into evaluating the causes / mechanisms / limitations of the data sets.

The Author Comments in reply to the Reviewers suggest that some of these issues may be addressed. The minor comments of both reviewers are indicated to be ‘modified’ and in many instances these will be easily achieved.

However, it is difficult from the responses at present to be clear that all changes can be easily included into a revised manuscript, and especially those of a substantive nature e.g. both reviewers ask for increased detail in the controls over GDGT production in lakes, and more detail about this lake. But the replies from the authors to these comments are very brief, implying that they may not consider adding the level of detail the reviewers would like to see. For example, R1 comments 20 and 21, and R2 comments 3, 4 and 15 (among others), seek detail and discussion but the current replies don’t provide additional justification for why these interpretations were made. Some of the author replies are “that’s not the same in this lake” when comparing to the literature cited by the reviewers, but in the absence of detail about this lake and it’s properties these statements are not fully justified. There will be some differences between systems, but that is all the more reason to detail the steps the authors took to make their interpretations based on other literature and the local factors.

I am prepared to review an updated version of this manuscript, where the authors show that they have made substantive edits and additions according to those requested by the reviewers. Both reviewers have provided very constructive comments about the complexities of the proxies, the need for these to be better detailed, and the need for the interpretations to be better explained as a result. I expect that the revised Introduction section (or a new section 2) provides a review of the key proxies, their interpretations and their limitations. There should also be increased detail about the modern properties of this lake, and how this might affect those same proxies. This ought then to link with why they might expect, for example, cren/cren’ to record lake level changes, and how that could link to e.g. hydrological change in the region. The authors should carefully consider the substantive comments about content provided by both reviewers, and increase the depth of information they provide as well as their critical evaluation of the literature.

Once the proxy-based changes have been completed, the authors also then need to carefully incorporate the comments about how they are linking their data to other records from the region. I agree with the reviewers that at present this lacks critical evaluation of the processes which are being recorded, and how/why there are agreements and disagreements between the records. But it remains difficult to assess this component of the manuscript at present where there remain many questions about how the authors reached the interpretations they have made of their data in the preceding sections.

Finally, the authors should note that the similarity report run as part of the submission process indicated that sections of the Methods part of the manuscript are also found, with only minor changes, from the same authors in a paper published in Quaternary Science Reviews in 2019. The authors should try to reduce this duplication in any revised submission.

Dear authors

Thank you for making your replies to the reviewers and the editor, and for providing an updated version of the manuscript.

Overall the manuscript is much improved. I have made some additional suggestions in the attached pdf, where the phrasing and grammar still requires some changes to ensure that your statements are clear. Please check these carefully, including the figure captions.

There is still a need for you to add some more detail to your discussion of the climatic implications of your findings, in the final Discussion paragraph. At present this paragraph is reliant on the paper by Ning et al. 2019 but it is presented very factually, rather than highlighting debate and uncertainties (and where your data sets could contribute to addressing these).

You should also refer carefully to the Climate of the Past data policy (climate-of-the-past.net/about/data_policy.html). Your data needs to be available in a publically accessible database, not just 'available on request'. Many of the databases allow you to embargo release of the datasets while publications are under review.

Best wishes
Erin McClymont