I was very excited by the prospect of this reviewing this paper based on the abstract and I was not disappointed. The extensive research results in a wonderful example of historical climate research that will appeal to the readership of Climates Past and Future. I look forward to seeing it published. The paper aims to extend the climate record beyond limited instrumental data and puts this in a regional context (comparison with the Yucatan Peninsula, Antigua, Guatemala, as well as a comparison with the Terminal Classic period in the Maya Lowlands). The manuscript by Gali et al. reconstructs the climate history of Belize using documentary evidence. A lack of historical and instrument observations limits our ability to calibrate or ground truth paleoclimate proxies, and this manuscript extends the ability of the community to do so by two centuries and is a good example of the additional tools available to use if researchers are willing to comb extensive archives of material. The introduction sets the scene appropriately and offers a fascinating overview of climate observations in colonial British Honduras. I was left thinking about the role of deforestation on local climate and wondered if a comparison with model data could be interesting.

Overall, the paper is a rigorously researched and well-presented narrative of changes in Belize and compared with regional records of historical drought in nearby countries, and a reference to the Terminal Classic rainfall reductions in the Maya Lowlands.

The authors have done an excellent job, and I recommend that the manuscript be accepted and published with a few minor revisions, though they are largely invitations to improve the clarity in a couple of areas. My specific comments are below.

Table 1: what is “reference period”?

Could add the ** (combined rainfall data) to Belize City meteorological station label in table

What is the dashed line in Figure 2?

Perhaps use the same scale of y axis in each – figure 3.c at 350 inches max. for the sake of comparing across records

Explain missing data points in caption?

Figure 4 – is this each time a drought is mentioned, or alluded to, in diaries etc in historical sources? Like in Figure 5 and 6: what is the threshold for “drought” (exceptional, drought, dry period, or all?)

Figure 5 – a bit complicated to interpret. High resolution compared to the record from southern Belize (Figure 6).

Wonder if there is a way of integrating some of the quotations with text with a more narrative figure. I enjoyed reading sections 5.1 and 5.2 but found it difficult to relate this to figures 5. And 6. Perhaps a way to do this would be to add sub-sub sections in 5.1 and 5.2 for each decade ee.g. 80s, 90s and so on.

This manuscript examines historical droughts in British Colonial Belize (1771–1981) using documentary sources and instrumental data. Overall, I think it represents an important contribution to the study of the historical climate of Central America, and therefore this manuscript should be published in Climate of the Past.

However, some details should be clarified or corrected before publication. Below, I highlight a few issues:

(i) The authors used early instrumental data. However, it remains unclear to readers (since the authors do not explicitly state it) whether other observations exist in the literature, such as those reported by Domínguez-Castro et al. (2017) or Brönnimann et al. (2019).

(ii) Why do the authors use inches as the unit of measurement for precipitation? In an international context, I believe that millimeters should be used, particularly in Figures 2 and 3.

(iii) The authors state that “A total of 288 historical sources documenting droughts in British Honduras were collected. This count excludes instrumental records and duplicate reports published by multiple sources (Fig. 4).” However, Figure 4 displays the number of drought-related sources per year across the study area. The wording is therefore unclear, and I suggest that the authors provide additional clarification.

(iv) The authors follow standard approaches used in historical climatology, employing drought categories. However, this methodology is often criticized for its lack of objectivity. Could the authors provide some comments on this point?

References

Domínguez-Castro et al. (2017) "Early Meteorological Records from Latin-America and Caribbean during the 18th and 19th centuries" Scientific Data 4, 170169. DOI: 10.1038/sdata.2017.169

Brönnimann et al. (2019) "Unlocking pre-1850 instrumental meteorological records: A global inventory" Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society 100(12), ES389–ES413. DOI: 10.1175/BAMS-D-19-0040.1