I can strongly recommend the article “Effects of weather and climate on fluctuations of grain prices in southwestern Bohemia, 1725–1824 CE” by Brázdil et al. for publication after only minor revision. It is clearly written, contains interesting results and are based, in part, on novel data. The structure of the article is clear. I have, however, recommendations for some additional references. Furthermore, I would like to see all material now placed in an Appendix included in the main article. It is only two tables and to include the in the main article would facilitate easier reading. My comments to individual things in the article as well as suggested additional references as are listed below.

Minor comments:

Abstract, line 8 (and other places): Here the term “weather is used”. How is this term used in relation to the term “climate”. In my opinion, “climate” is a more suitable term in this article than “weather”.

Abstract, line 9: Would it be possible to be more precise than just writing “societal and socio-economic factors”?

Abstract, line 13: The term “mean annual variation” is not very clear to me. Maybe it can be expressed in another way?

Line 21: I would even recommend the authors to state that grain was the single-most important food source and cite Scott (2017) to support this.

Line 22, after Person (1999), cite also Leijonhufvud (2001).

Line 29: Cite also Skoglund (2024) here.

Line 34: Maybe here also cite Ljungqvist et al. (2024).

Line 39: It should be Edvinsson et al. (2009).

Line 40: Cite also Huhtamaa et al. (2022).

Line 104: This is a surprisingly low July temperature for Central Europe. Please discuss the effect of elevation here and state the elevation of the measurements.

Line 115 (and elsewhere): Be clear why 1951–1980 is chosen as a reference period here.

Lines 133–134: I think this can be part of the paragraph above.

Line 142: Please provide a reference to scPDSI as a metric.

Line 193: Please provide standard references to SEA.

Fig. 8: The panels in the figure are too small. I would suggest to redraw the figure so that “A” comes above “B” instead of having “A” and “B” side by side.

Line 500: I find “Western Europe” a somewhat problematic term here, especially as the reference Collet (2010) refers to Germany, as both Germany and Czechia can be said to be part of Central Europe.

Line 520: Ljungqvist et al. 82022) excluded Czechia because of the grain price series at hand were too short to fit the inclusion criteria. Maybe that should be stated.

Lines 525–527: Maybe state the direction of the correlations?

Line 542. Something is wrong, it seems, with the formulation “significantly stronger signal of cooler”.

Page 23 and 24: Include in main article instead.

Line 587 (and other places): Better to write “grain price” than “grain-price” with “-“.

Line 602: Funding agency is lacking: only grant number and grant title provided.

References:

Edvinsson, R., Leijonhufvud, L., and Söderberg, J.: Väder, skördar och priser i Sverige, in: Agrarhistoria på många sätt: 28 studier om människan och jorden. Festskrift till Janken Myrdal på hans 60-årsdag, edited by: Liljewall, B., Flygare, I. A., Lange, U., Ljunggren, L., and Söderberg, J., 115–136, The Royal Swedish Academy of Agriculture and Forestry, Stockholm, ISBN 978-91-85205-91-2, 2009.

Huhtamaa, H., Stoffel, M., and Corona, C.: Recession or resilience? Long-range socioeconomic consequences of the 17th century volcanic eruptions in northern Fennoscandia, Clim. Past, 18, 2077–2092, https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-18-2077-2022, 2022.

Leijonhufvud, L.: Grain Tithes and Manorial Yields in Early Modern Sweden: Trends and Patterns of Production and Productivity c. 1540–1680, PhD thesis, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Ulltuna, ISBN 9157658293, 2001.

Ljungqvist, F. C., Seim, A., and Collet, D.: Famines in medieval and early modern Europe – Connecting climate and society, Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Climate Change, 15, e859, 2024

Scott, J. C. Against the Grain: A Deep History of the Earliest States. Yale University Press, New Haven, 2017.

Skoglund, M. K.: The impact of drought on northern European pre-industrial agriculture, The Holocene, 34, 120–135, 2024.

The work of the manuscript CP-2024-2 is an excellent effort to integrate historical climate information with variables from social dimension.

The reviewer has no questions of detail about the work, methods and data, or the results.

The work could be published after addressing two minor issues:

1) General question:

            The work focuses on cereal price fluctuations to identify climatic factors and their degree of incidence. Please can you explain if there are already works based on the cereal production variable in your study area. Can you comment/justify why you prefer use of market prices of different cereals to identify climatic factors incidence, instead use of cereal production information and statistics?

            Are there works already published about cereal production? Are these investigations ongoing? If not, can you give a brief summary of the availability of this type of information in documentary sources, and assess whether it would be possible to carry out a research such as the one you propose in this manuscript?

            I consider this series of questions timely since to establish the incidence of the climate and its extreme meteorological events, its relationship with agricultural production data seems more consistent. Documentary sources can provide these values ​​in time series, whether in statistics from government administrations, private documentation of farming families or, perhaps most valid in many regions, fiscal and ecclesiastical tithe records.

2) Specific quesion on methodological aspects:

            The co-authors demonstrate extensive knowledge and availability of previous materials, organized in databases. On the other hand, in the manuscript it is difficult to identify the information used to generate a series of data that are evidently reconstructed on temperature, precipitation and PSDI. They appear in figure 7, page 12.

            The provenance of instrumental sources can be understood for the early instrumental period, approximately 1780-1825. On the other hand, the origin of the information on the same variables for the period 1720s-1780s or later is not identified. If indexes or previous materials are already available, it would be interesting for the public to briefly know their origin, characteristics and bibliographical references.

Manuscript CP-2024-2 is excellent in terms of scientific contribution, scientific quality and presentation. The discussion and explanations are clear and of high quality, while providing a new, solidly substantiated contribution to the question of the relationship between weather, climate and grain prices (and also to the importance of grain prices as climate proxies). The social, political and economic dimensions of grain price formation are presented in detail.

This work absolutely deserves to be published.

A few minor questions or comments are addressed to the authors, without seeking to embarrass them, insofar as the answers are only accessible if substantial sources are available to contextualise the events, which is not necessarily the case for the small town of Sušice at the time studied.

1/ General questions :

Insofar as the wars affecting the region are clearly indicated (lines 81-100), is it possible to know whether certain poor harvests - or even years with no information concerning Sušice (lines 400-403) - were the result of periods of occupation or troop movements?

Did troop movements, invasions (lines 460-464) or rumours of invasion cause harvests to be brought forward (or delayed), which could have an impact on the quantity and/or quality of harvests and therefore on price formation, a phenomenon already identified in relation to grape harvests (Labbé, T., Pfister, C., Brönnimann, S., Rousseau, D., Franke, J., and Bois, B.: The longest homogeneous series of grape harvest dates, Beaune 1354-2018, and its significance for the understanding of past and present climate, Clim. Past, 15, 1485-1501, https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-15-1485-2019, 2019.). Would it be possible, given the current state of the sources, to indicate (perhaps by a simple percentage) the number of harvests affected by this bias? Are these situations linked to high prices?

Conversely, in the same type of context and insofar as Figure 1 seems to show a town that was at least partly fortified, could the withdrawal of the population to the shelter of the town walls with its grain reserves artificially lower prices?

In times of peace, in the factors mentioned (lines 45-46) about years of exceptionally large harvests, might these not - counter-intuitively - cause prices to rise because of the extremely large workforce, means of transport and storage facilities that are mobilised during the harvests?

2/ Specific questions:

Figure 1 could perhaps use a little commentary to go beyond the simple illustration and highlight what it shows in relation to the article: a small town on the banks of the Otava, in a peri-urban landscape of very heavily humanised hills, showing the crops mentioned in the article, with the Bohemian (?) forests remaining only on the summits.

Similarly, it might be worth highlighting the very good regional/local accounting suggested by Figure 4, with sources that have increasingly standardised administrative and fiscal norms? Could a reference to Figure 4 be placed on lines 148-149 (if that is what well what the figure illustrates)?

Sušice was a redistribution market for 91 localities, which probably roughly make up its Hinterland (or even its Umland). Did the trade in grain to neighbouring regions capable of extending their economic and commercial influence to distant producing regions require the local authorities to close borders or introduce temporary legislation banning exports (especially in time of crisis)? (lines 474-480)

It is very difficult to add comments to this paper after the previous reviewers!

This is a very interesting paper and should be published.

I have some very minor additions, which I don't think the other reviewers have bothered with, but since I have to write somehing, here are some very minor ideas and suggestions.

Personally, I found table 2 and the examination of years with extremely high grain prices very interesting.

Some very minor language issues:

317: "... snow which was lying for four weeks that all grain already sown extinct..." something like? "...snow which was lying for four weeks and destroyed all grain already sown..."

318 "...i.e. sooner too wet and then too dry..." something like: "...i.e. first too wet and then too dry..."

References to the appendix (line 267 and particularly line 382) are not very clear. ("Table A1"). Eventually you come to these tables, but it would be easier if just "see appendix, table A1" - or even better, adopt Ljungqvist approach and place the Appendix in the text.

432 "raising grain prices to six guldens." This is an informative quote, but would be even more informative, if there was an addition to the "normal" price - or what price it was raised from.

511. "... focusing on ten selected years /-/ only the years 1771-1772, 1802, and 1918-1817 were outside of war..." 5 out of 10 is not what I should describe as "only". Make it easy: delete "only".