Dear authors,

After seeing your response to the three reviewers, I am waiting after the revised manuscript to state on the final acceptation of your paper.

Please follow carefully the remarks of the reviewers and add all figures and text to improve you manuscript especially regarding the comparison in the wide context of the west mediterranean (including central mediterranean). It has been requested by two of the reviewers and it seems essential for your paper. Do not hesitate to add a synthetic figure for comparison.

Do not forget to include in your revised text all the explanations you have done in the responses to reviewers especially to reviewers 1 and 3 questions and comments, it seems largely necessary for detailing your text.

Finally, have a carefull look at english writing as requested by reviewer 2
waiting forward to seeing you revised manuscript

Best regards

Nathalie Combourieu-Nebout

Dear authors,

Thank you for your revised manuscript. I have had a careful look on your text and figures seeing what you have changed and what has been requested by the three reviewers.

It is clear from this review that new amendments are needed. This will not take long work but is absolutely necessary before the final acceptance of your document.

I list below what it remains essential to be modified:

1. The description of studied area, some precisions are important: the annual precipitation and temperature averages are not sufficient as you discuss in your paper about January temperature (winter) and about summer and winter precipitation. You must add the present- day ones as reference in your paper (with values) in the text and also in the figures showing the past variations (by a little star for example).
in the same paragraph, you have to describe more in the text the present day vegetation, not only through Quercus and Cedar as component of the forest. A rapid decription of the components of the different types of vegetation cited in the figure 1 is important. Please name Quercus rotondifolia by Quercus. ilex subsp rotondifolia (Tela botanica - I think that it is this species after searching on internet). The reader could see that you have deciduous and evergreen Quercus (Q. Canariensis being deciduous) in the vegetation, it is not evident for him (her). You mentioned the different species of Pine in response to reviewer 1. If they are a component of the vegetation you have to mention that in your description.

2. In material and method paragraph.

a. You have to note that the Quercus (deciduous and evergreen) have been gathered in a unique group (this was a precision asked by reviewer 1) and please do not call it “evergreen Quercus” (as in your figure) if it is not only evergreen ones. So note this curve only “Quercus sp” to be more rigorous. All the three reviewers ask you questions about that.

b. Your discussion is mainly centered on pollen-based climate reconstructions. Then this part of the methods has to be more developed. In fact, you refer to a paper published in 2014. This paper is focused on South Africa. I would like to believe that the method goes well in Mediterranean area too. Nevertheless it remains necessary to bring several precisions. How the Mediterranean taxa had been included in the method? And Cedar which is not a component of the African vegetation)? Have you done tests before application on Mediterranean? This has to be added in the paper or at least a reference that state on the methodology in the Mediterranean. In any case, it is important to detail which taxa have been taking into account for the reconstructions (all taxa?? what about Mediterranean??? All are taken or only some of them are taken??? Same for other groups of taxa - temperate, Cedar,….). it is important to detailed the method as the discussion is based on the reconstructions.

c. You have to say in the text that the dates have been done on bulk sediment.

3. Results: thanks to add a table to describe more the vegetation changes. However, I would like to see the pollen zones drawn on the diagram even if you do not use them in the discussion. It will make easier the reader for the interpretation of diagram and table.

4. Discussion: I have seen nothing in the discussion that takes into account the fact that it will be interesting to compare your results with the previous pollen-based climate reconstructions that has been done on Alboran see cores (Dormoy et al., 2009; Combourieu-Nebout et al, 2009; and in Morocco (Cheddadi et al., 2009) even it had been done with other methods. Reviewer 1 requested such discussion and you respond that you will do that in the revised manuscript. Please do that.
Concerning the SI changes, there are papers that already states that the Mediterranean seasonal contrast takes place after 4.2 (see for example Combourieu-Nebout et al. 2013 on Adriatic Sea in which the summer and winter precipitation curves are represented)

5. Reviewer 3 asked you to enlarge the discussion to all the western Mediterranean. In fact, it will be very interesting to replace the data of the lake Hachlah in a broader context. You prefer to stay in a short area in the western part of the west Mediterranean, that’s a choice. Nevertheless, in that case, you have to take into account and compare with all the references from the restricted area you chose: continental, marine (Alboran Sea), done on one site or several and compilation of sites which includes sites from the studied area (ex: Magny et al., several papers; Fletcher and Zielhofer, 2013). Do not forget that and add all the references (for example) that covered the time slice studied in the discussion and really discuss your results face to them.

6. other corrections to be done

a. Some French expressions remain in the text (p.5 l.31 “varie de” has to be changed in “varies” please check in all text of other ones are still remaining.

b. Please correct d13C in 13C in all text (p.7 l. 30 for example)

c. The line in red has not been removed in the diagrams as proposed in the response to reviewer. Either you explain what it means in the caption or you remove it from the figures.

d. Please complete the caption of figure 4 as requested by the reviewer 1

e. You added the pollen sums in the fig.4. Please use bigger characters as they are really difficult to read in the proposed figure.

I am waiting after your new revised manuscript.

Best regards
Nathalie Combourieu-Nebout

Dear authors,

Thanks for sending a new version that follows now nearly all the suggestions of the reviewers and thank you for the response to my last remarks.
Your paper is now nearly close to be published and I would like now you do last few amendments in text, references and citations. In fact, there are little imprecision. Corrections requested do not take much time and I am sure that you will do them very quickly

In the text:
1. You have added some indications on the present day vegetation and amended the method. Could you please add a short sentence on the Quercus saying why you have only taken into account Q. Ilex in the pollen based climate reconstructions although you have today two type of Quercus. In fact the two Quercus living in the studied area are probably adapted to Mediterranean conditions. Nevertheless may be the Q. Canariensis have been more developed in some part of the Holocene. As you have not been able to separate the two taxa, it will be interesting to consider the two in the reconstructions if they have not exactly the same requirements in terms of temperature and precipitations. For this reason I ask you to add this sentence to justify a little your choice.
2. Thank you to have added the table of the taxa chosen for the pollen-based reconstructions. This table is useful. Keep it in the last version.

Concerning the figures and captions
1. Figure 2: in the figure, you have to add the ages in cal year, for the reader it will be better to have the two on the schema. Please add also the marks at 50, 100,150 and 200 cm on the stratigraphic column. Put the text on horizontal way on the profiles presented on the right
2. Figure 3 what is the blue rectangle? Please indicate what it is in the caption.
3. Figure 4. It is very difficult to see which pollen sum correspond to which sample.

Concerning the citations and references, there are some little verification to be done:
1. First, could you please homogenize the”&” and the “and”. In my opinion, it will be better to have only “and” in citations and in reference list.
2. Ballouche 1986 is named Ballouche et al. in the text. Please verify and change as necessary
3. P15 l10 Brooks et al., 2012 directly follow Bond et al., 2001. Please separate the two references
4. Please name Carrion as follows: Carrión
5. Cheddadi at al., 2016: it has not been possible to find this reference. Is it already published? If it is in press, please note that as “in press”
6. Fletcher et al., 2010: lot of authors are missing. Please complete the list of authors.
And verify if there are no other names missing in the reference lists of authors.
7. Jansen et al., 2008 is noted in 2009 in the text???
8. Märsche-Soulié is noted Märsche-Soulie in the text p.4, l.5
9. Bottema is written Bottemaj p.22 l.26
10. The two references of Myers are not in the right order.
11. Rohling et al., 2002 is noted Rohling, 2002 p.3 l.9
12. The reference Stuiver et al, 1991 is not written with the Climate of the Past rules
13. Could you please write my name Combourieu-Nebout in all you text and references. Thank you.

I am looking forwards seeing the next version of your paper that will be without doubt the last version and the definitively accepted manuscript.
Best regards
Nathaie Combourieu-Nebout

Dear authors,

Thank you for sending this new version. I have seen that you have followed most of my requests.

However, regarding my request about the Quercus? I noted that no sentence have been added in the text. Could you please add this sentence and place the scheme proposed in your response in an additional file joined to the paper (see in instruction to authors how doing that). In fact, what you present in the response does not exactly respond to my question (see in previous comments). I asked you a question regarding the differences between the Q. ilex and the Q. canariensis. Could it be possible to add the requirements of Q. canariensis on the figure which will be in additional file?

At the end, reading your last version, I have seen something in the figure 3 with the reconstructed climate parameters. You present temperature curves with errors bars but no error bars have been drawn for the summer and winter precipitation. Why? Could you please add them on the figure 3. Thank you for that.
I noted also that the present-day winter precipitation is very low comparing to those reconstructed for the present time (O kyrs). Why? If it is due to anthropogenic effect, please mentioned this difference in the text and try to explain it. As the SI is conditioned by the reconstruction of seasonal precipitation, the present day SI could be near the observed one. Is it the case if the reconstructed winter values are far from the present-day ones? And then what is the influence on the past reconstructions?

Thank you for doing these last amendments to your manuscript and figures.

Best regards

Nathalie Combourieu-Nebout

Dear authors,

Thank you for the corrections you did on the last version of your paper. The text and figures are now amended as requested by reviewers and editor and I accept this last version of your manuscript for publication in Climate of the Past.

Best regards

Nathalie Combourieu-Nebout