Greenland accumulation and its connection to the large-scale atmospheric circulation in ERA-Interim and paleo-climate simulations, Climate of the

downscaling to an orbital-only Holocene-long simulation and over The is performed for and show in simulated of data resemble different


General
The study touches a highly important topic in paleo climate, namely the mismatch between local climate proxy information and the rather coarsely resolved paleo climate modelling. The authors present an approach to bridge the gap of scales by a downscaling approach. Clearly the topic desires publication in the Climate of the past, but the current study shows a number of short comings. Besides some structural problems (see below) there is a lack in presenting the state of knowledge in the introduction as a large number of recent studies on dynamical downscaling for paleo climatic studies is missing. Then the results lack a clear discussion of seasonality differences in the proxy data. Also the method itself is to my opinion named wrongly: the authors called it dynamical downscaling and explain that the basic idea is to reproduce the model physics and NOT the dynamics. Due to my rather long list of comments (not sorted into major or minor) I recommend at least major revision of the manuscript.

Comments
Title: The authors use only orbital and GHG forcing so I would not call it a Holocene Climate simulation, rather an orbital-GHG-only simulation for the Holocene period.
L 60 and the following paragraphs: There is growing literature on real dynamical downscaling using RCMs on the Paleo perspective so please make a reasonable review on the existing knowledge. Here is a collection of possible publications: Bromwich, et al. (2004). Polar MM5 simulations of the winter climate of the Laurentide ice sheet at the LGM. Journal of Climate, 17(17), 3415-3433.
L140: The ECBilt model is a quasi-geostrophic model so the most important mode of variability in the climate system ENSO is not included in the model by definition. So how does this shortcoming impact your results knowing that ENSO has an influence on the Europe? Section 2.1.2: The authors do NOT apply a dynamical downscaling as they correctly say that the only try to reproduce the model physics and not the dynamics so it is awkward to call the method "dynamical downscaling. This is an important point as real dynamical downscaling implies the application of a regional climate model with incudes dynamics. So I recommend that the authors change the wording in the entire manuscript.
L158-59: If I understand this correctly the method conserves the precipitation amount so that I would average over the same area as the coarse grid I would obtain the same precipitation also in the fine grid. If this is correct I do not understand why precipitation is different in Figure 5and e.g. in Fig 4 if we look at the grid point over Scotland. So either the figure is wrong or the description of the methods is incorrect.
L159-164: Well isn't this logical as the method does not include a dynamical part (only physics is changed) one would expect that it is not able to change the biased large scale atm. circulation. Section 2.1.3: To my understanding I would not call this a Holocene simulation as important external forcing agents are missing, i.e., solar forcing and volcanic eruptions. It is clear that the authors cannot rerun the simulations using all forcings so I suggest to make it clear that the authors performed a r an orbital-GHG-only simulation for the Holocene period. So name the simulation always "an orbital-GHG-only simulation for the Holocene period." Just for curiosity why do you only use orbital and GHG forcing and not include the other two? L245: Why do the authors compare their results to PMIP2 and not to PMIP3 or 4? There are newer studies e.g. Liu et al. 2014, Russo et al. 2022 and PMIP4 studies.
L253-54: please change to "Overall the native grid (T21/11.5_Standard) is still seen on the 11.5K_Down model results in many regions for all times slices. " Fig.4: The downscaled data looks weird, e.g. in panel d we see at 50N a clear boundary with a change from +100 mm/yr to -100 mm/yr with no gradient in between. This makes no sense.
3.2.1 is the only subsubsection which makes no sense.
4.1.1 The authors compare their results to proxy data which is good. Still I miss a clear discussion on the seasonality of the proxy data which might play an important role in interpreting the proxy data especially the trends. E.g. tree rings and pollen data are biased to the growing season but these data are compared to yearly means of the simulation. Check out the Bader et al 2020 publication on this.
L442: Brayshaw et al. does not simulate the entire Holocene. He rather simulated time slices distributed during the Holocene. So it is not a transient simulation he performed. Please be more specific about this. L475 and paragraph: Again only PMIP2 is used, why not using the updates of PMIP3 and 4 ? 4.1.2 This subsection is rather short compared to the 4.1.1 so just merge it to one section 4 Discussion. L485-87: I think there is a caveat which makes the data not so useful as the authors think as the coarse grid sometimes remains preserved in the downscaled data leading to boundaries (see Fig. 5). I think the authors need to be more cautious about this and not overrate their results.
Reference list contains a lot of errors please correct them.
The quality of the figures is bad please use at least 300 dpi.