The present manuscript submitted by Gali et al. to Climate of the Past, 'Historical droughts in british Colonial Belize (1771-1981)', is a publication which has been subject to comprehensive research, and it is anticipated that it will appeal to scientists across a range of disciplines. The region in which the work is conducted is significantly under-represented in the current literature, and this paper constitutes an excellent contribution to both the scientific community and our regional understanding of climate.

The paper presents a state-of-the-are Holocene reconstruction of North American vegetation shifts, including a discussion of drivers and potential feedbacks on climate.

Stevenard et al. present the first compilation of SST records covering the period 350 to 300 ka, encompassing Termination IV and the subsequent interglacial (Marine isotope stage, MIS, 9e). They show that surface temperatures rose by ~5.7 °C during Termination IV, comparable to the estimated warming of Terminations I and II. Their results further suggest that globally averaged SST during MIS9e were similar to the pre-industrial. This reflects a highly spatially heterogeneous interglacial optimum, likely influenced by variations in the strength of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation.

These data are unique to Greenland, particularly from the base of the Camp Century ice core. These data, which show several periods of glaciation and non-glaciation in northwest Greenland prior to the formation of the current ice cap, should be of great interest to the paleo community, from paleoecologists to modelers.

This Milankovic Medalist paper represents a tour de force, addressing a complex yet crucial question: the evolution of global climate over the past 4.5 million years. This paper makes a significant contribution to the geoscience community by providing a self-consistent decomposition of global mean benthic δ18O into its temperature and seawater (ice volume) components. This approach is consistent with independent estimates of global mean sea surface temperature (GMSST) and sea level constraints.The analysis incorporates numerous high-resolution records spanning this period and highlights two distinct climatic regimes: • Before 1.5 million years ago, a warm period characterized by smaller-amplitude ice sheet and sea level cycles, primarily driven by obliquity timescales. • Following the Mid-Pleistocene Transition (MPT), i.e. after 1 million years, a well-documented increase in the amplitude of glacial cycles became evident. The central finding of the study is that, during the MPT, there was a shift in ocean heat storage efficiency (HSE). Prior to this transition, HSE remained low and constant, whereas after the MPT, it doubled and stabilized at a higher value. This finding is supported by the observation of subtle differential changes in global mean SST and mean ocean temperature (MOT), which appear to be time-dependent. These observations suggest a potential fundamental shift in oceanic heat storage dynamics.