Dear Dr. Leutert

Thank you for submitting your manuscript entitled «Southern Ocean bottom water cooling and ice sheet expansion during the middle Miocene climate transition» to Climate of the Past.

I think in it's present form the manuscript is well written and mostly well structured, with generally appropriate figures, text, and referencing. The reviewers have several suggestions for improving the paper to make it more impactful and accurate. I will want to see all this done before publishing the manuscript.

The paper has been reviewed by one paleoclimate modeler and two paleo-proxy experts and both have given it substantive and favorable reviews which I concur with. The anonymous reviewer 1 ranked the paper as requiring a major round of revisions while the two others choose minor revisions.

Reviews are quite clear and some requests have been formulated by two reviewers at least. Among them, a re-organization of the manuscript and in particular separating the methods from the discussion seems mandatory here. In addition, rev1 and rev3 would like to see a more detailed discussion of your results, their implication in terms of ocean dynamics and a deeper mechanistic interpretation.



Please submit a revised version of your manuscript taking into account as much as possible reviewer assessments (as you already did in your answers). I may send back the revised manuscript to the anonymous reviewer 1 - this should be fast given your already detailed answers to reviewers.

I look forward to receiving your revised manuscript. If you have any questions, please contact the editorial office at editorial@copernicus.org
.

Sincerely,

Yannick Donnadieu

Dear Authors,

As you will see, the referee has found your revisions quite clear and thorough. I concur with the referee and accept the paper as it is (pending some technical corrections suggested by the referee). Thanks for your patience and for having submitted your work to Climate of the Past. Last but not least, all my apologies for the long delay to end up with the acceptation owing to Covid crisis.

Best Regards,

-- Yannick Donnadieu