Dear Simon Michel and co-authors,

Thank you for submitting a revised version of your manuscript gmd-2018-211. I have received 3 referee reports on your manuscript and two reviewers agree that the manuscript still requires substantial revisions. I would particularly like to highlight the need to provide:
- better justification of the choice of statistical method,
- justification of the cross-validation performed,
- adequate citation of the underlying R-packages used in the toolbox presented and explanation of the added-value of CliMoRec with respect to the existing R-packages,
- a frozen version of the code and data provided in an Archive with DOI or provided in supplementary material (see our code and data policy). I would suggest Archiving the Git Hub repository on Zendo to get a DOI citation. See this link for further details on the process:
https://guides.github.com/activities/citable-code/

The reviewers also highlight a number of other points that will need addressing, and may require revising the code (e.g. point 1.1 in Referee report 1). If you do update your code in response to the reviewers comments, please make sure to update the version number in the title. I would now like to invite you to submit a revised version of your manuscript, which addresses all of the reviewers comments. Please provide a point-by-point response to all of the reviewers' comments detailing how you have addressed them in your revised manuscript.

Best regards,

Lauren Gregoire

Dear Authors,
I apologise again for the long delay in the phase of review. I have just received the comments I was waiting for from an anonymous reviewer and i'm happy to say that we are happy to publish your papers subject to minor revisions to the text. These include replacing the term "hyperparameter" with "control parameters" and "Pages 2K" with "PAGES 2k". Please also consider the in-text editorial comments suggested by the reviewer in the PDF of their referee report.

Dear Simon Michel and co-authors,

Many thanks for providing your latest revised manuscript and response to the review. i am satisfied that you've addressed all the comments. In particular i would like to stress that i agree with you that the reviewer's comments describing you as "ignorant" of a fact you stated in your supplementary material and "not on top of [your] statistical game" are untrue and i am sorry that these comments have upset you.

I am happy to accept the manuscript for publication in GMD. There is only one technical correction that needs to be done, but this should not delay publication as i do not need to review the correction. I noticed that you changed "hyperparameter" to "control parameter" in the main manuscript, but not in the supplementary material. Please could you also make this change to the supplement so that both documents are consistent with each other.

Many thanks again for submitting your manuscript to GMD. I apologise again for the delays in the review process. These were due to difficulties in finding reviewers, delay in receiving reviews and also some personal circumstances and strike that have delayed my decisions. I hope that this publication can facilitate the use of ClimIndRec and wish you and your co-authors the best in future work.

Lauren Gregoire