Dear Jannis,

We have received the reviews of your manuscript. As you will have seen, both reviewers have spent quite some time carefully evaluating your work. In particular, Reviewer#2 has raised some important issues and is not fully satisfied with the present version of the manuscript.

I would therefore invite you to submit a revised version, based on your responses to the reviewers’ comments and in line with the reviewers’ feedback. I will then ask Reviewer#2 to re-evaluate the manuscript, after which I will be happy to reconsider it for publication.

From my end, I have a couple of questions I would like you to consider and potentially clarify in your revision:
1) How effectively can 200 µm horizons integrate/capture annual events when SNR is only ~1 at that scale (i.e. when signal and noise are approximately equal at that scale)?
2) Given that bioturbation creates spatial heterogeneity even in laminated sections, how much of the measured variability is climatically meaningful versus mixing artifacts?

All the best,
Francesco

Dear Jannis,

Thank you for submitting your revised manuscript; it has now been seen by both reviewers, whose comments are appended below. In light of their assessment, I'm pleased to inform you that the manuscript is acceptable for publication in Climate of the Past, subject to minor technical revisions. Both reviewers are satisfied with the changes you have made, but have identified a number of small issues –primarily typographical errors, wording clarifications, and a suggestion to make the depth-to-time conversion more explicit– that should be addressed before final publication. Please see their comments and submit a corrected version at your earliest convenience.

Looking forward to seeing your work in print.

All the best,
Francesco


Reviewer #1:
I thank the authors for addressing my comments thoroughly. I look forward to seeing further applications of this exciting analytical technique.
- Joseph Novak

Minor comments:

L336: I would urge some caution in the discussion of the laboratory culture data in this way. Keep in mind that culture studies are often conducted with algal strains that have been grown in a laboratory setting for decades, which is known to result in genetic drift: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biotechadv.2022.108034.

Below are minor technical errors that I recommend the authors address prior to the publication of the article.

L9: I think a word is missing between "allow" and "to measure"

L40: The wording of this sentence is a bit confusing. Do you mean that the sampling resolution of most proxy studies is less than the rate at which sediments accumulate? The current wording indicates the opposite meaning.

L41: by "theoretical resolution" do you mean "sampling resolution"?

L47: citation misplaced in sentence

L53-54: citation misplaced in sentence

L107: check citation formatting

L179: something strange is happening here


Reviewer #2:
The authors have sufficiently addressed all of the comments that I made on the initial manuscript, and I think that the study is now much more accessible to non-MSI experts. There are still a few grammatical/typing errors and poor word choices throughout the text, and I would encourage the authors to take a bit more time to review the manuscript prior to final publication, paying particular attention to the clarity of figure captions. Further, there are a few spots where the authors move between discussing depth and time, where it might be valuable to reiterate the presumed accumulation rate. For example, in the discussion section, the authors refer to Figure 4 panel A and state that the green line shows seasonal oscillations, but it would be helpful to explicitly mention or visually illustrate how the mm depth scale should translate to annual timescales and the associated uncertainties with this conversion.