The authors’ response to the referee reports is not detailed and specific enough to check whether the comments by the referees have been sufficiently addressed. In particular, it is not possible to check how the extensive, detailed and quite critical comments by referee #1 (about 10 pages) are included into the revised manuscript and whether these changes are adequate to meet the standards of Earth System Dynamics for this Special Issue. The authors provide only about two pages of a rather general response highlighting several issues where they have addressed the referees’ comments. Changes in the manuscript are not visible and cannot be directly tracked and compared to the original version.

Therefore, it is suggested that the authors submit a more detailed response to the referees that gives a line-by-line reply to their comments. In addition, it would be very helpful to track and make visible the actual changes in the manuscript.

The authors have addressed much of the comments of the reviewers and revised the paper accordingly, to make it more suitable for publication. In a separate note, remaining issues are highlighted that need to be addressed before publication, including a number of technical corrections.