GMD aims to enable complete and traceable model descriptions. Of course this is often not completely possible as there is a limit to the level of detail that can be covered in a paper. However, the model description in this manuscript is still a long way from that limit. There are some unsatisfactory gaps which I hope you can fill. Forte 2.0 is constructed from IGCM4 and MOMA. You need to make it clear which versions of these models you are using. Both references for these models that are cited in the manuscript are a few years old (2015 for GCM4 and 1996(!) for MOMA). Please update these so that your manuscript includes, or references, model description of changes in these models relevant to the versions you are using. I had thought that the original description paper for FORTE might help us out here, but I see that it is grey literature. Is it even relevant? Was FORTE constructed from these same 2 models? I understood that you were going to include some of the background documentation, but I can only see the model code in the Zenodo archive.

Thanks for your attention to detail! I am happy to accept this manuscript for publication.