Dear Authors,

Thank you for your responses to your referees and for your revised manuscript.

After reviewing these, I am generally satisfied that your manuscript is now suitable for publication.

However, there are two points in your response to Referee 2 in which you mention performing additional work to address comments: “We expect these experiments to come to equilibrium state within a month and may be able to comment on them then”; and then, later, “Also, we are currently running a new experiment [that] could possibly be integrated within the manuscript in a few sentences”.

For obvious reasons, the version of your manuscript that accompanies these responses does not currently address these points. As such, I am returning your manuscript to you for further revision that clarifies and finalises these points. Assuming that the additional work alluded to is complete (or will complete shortly), please revise your manuscript appropriately.

If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to get in contact.

With best regards,

Andrew Yool.

Dear Authors,

Thank you for your clarification of the issues raised previously. I am now satisfied that your response to your referees addresses the issues raised.

I notice that your code availability points towards the svn.tpac.org.au repository. Our guidance notes favour repositories listed at the Registry of Research Data Repositories (see: https://www.geoscientific-model-development.net/about/code_and_data_policy.html). During the final preparation of your manuscript, you may wish to consider uploading your code to one of these repositories (I am unable to find your repository there). However, I fully appreciate that this is an additional task, and one that might not suit your interests.

In any case, thank you again for considering GMD for your best work. And please feel free to contact me should any further questions arise.

With best regards,

Andrew Yool.