Dear Mr. Mewes
Thank you for the careful revisions, which greatly improved your paper. However, Reviewer 1 still has important points that need to be reconsidered. The link between energy transport and temperature anomalies is not yet fully clear and convincing. Other points are mentioned in the review. I decided to choose "minor revisions" but there are not many, but the few are important!
All the best with further improving your manuscript and best regards,
Heini Wernli

Dear Mr. Mewes
Many thanks for your revisions. I now also had a detailed look at your revised paper. I appreciate the main result, that parts of the Arctic temperature trend can be attributed to changes in large-scale transport patterns (Fig. 8). The paper is now almost ready for publication, however, some changes to the language are still required and a few important clarifications would be very helpful for the future readers of your study (see comments below). Please very carefully check your revised version for typos etc.
With best regards,
Heini Wernli


p. 1 line 17 and in other places: "Arctic Amplification" --> "Arctic amplification"

p. 2 line 8: "Aleuten low" --> "Aleutian Low"

p. 3 line 23: I don't understand the sentence "Thereby ..." can it be omitted or can you reformulate it and make it more understandable?

p. 3 line 27: "patterns emerges" --> "patterns emerge"

p. 3 line 29: you never explain what "Eucledian distance" (and in what region, only Arctic or entire Hemisphere?) you are using for your SOM analysis, please explain! The description should be such that the results become reproducible. Also further below (p. 4 line 8) you write "due to the characteristics of Euclidean distance" but the reader does not know what this distance is!

p. 4 lines 9 and 13: "under" --> " from a"

p. 4 line 15: I don't know what you mean with "intrinsic topology of the data"

p. 4 line 20: "Arctic Ocean" --> "Arctic"

p. 4 line 25 and throughout the paper: I suggest that you write "Pathway" with a small "p"

p. 4 line 28: "from North Atlantic" --> "from the North Atlantic"

p. 4 line 34: "centralized center" ?? just "center" is fine

Caption of Fig. 1: please explain clearly that vectors show MSET, and colors the magnitude of MSET (is this correct?).

p. 6 line 3: "of the temperature anomalies" --> "of the 2-m temperature anomalies"

p. 6 line 4: you can delete the sentence "The red framed plot ..." since this is clear from the figure caption.

Caption of Fig. 3: "for each of three the pathways" --> "for the three pathways"

Caption of Fig. 4: "hPA" --> "hPa"

p. 8 line 1: "a elongated" --> "an elongated"

p. 8 line 7: you just show Fig. 5 but don't comment on it. What should the reader learn from this figure? Maybe Figs. 5 and 6 could be combined into one figure with 4 panels in a 2x2 arrangement?

Caption of Fig. 7: "for each years winter" --> "for each winter"

p. 8 line 9: I don't understand, what do you mean by "No advection (transport across the gradient) is shown"; and why "No" with capital N after ";"?

Fig. 8: Is this for 2-m temperature or for the vertical integral, please specify!

p. 10 line 16: "are broadly inverse to each other" --> "are typically of opposite sign"

p. 10 line 18: "then" --> "than"

p. 11 line 6: "It has to be noted, that the MSE transport cannot be accounted for changes in the temperature anomalies alone." This sentence has grammatical problems. Most likely you like to say "Please note that the changes in MSE transport cannot account for the entire temperature trends."

p. 11 line 12: "It has to be noted that the linkage ... is not straightforward."

p. 11 line 14: I find it confusing that you mention here that MSE flux convergence and T2m did not show good agreement, because you never showed this field?? Also, why do you write here about MSE fluxes and in the rest of the paper about MSE transport?? Please clarify.

p. 11 line 21: why "and"?? (4th word), I think this can be deleted

p. 15 line 22: "climate" --> "Climate"

List of references: for most references, you write the full journal names, but for some you use abbreviations. Please make this consistent.

Dear Mr. Mewes
Many thanks for your careful revisions. I am happy to accept your paper for publication in ACP.
With best regards,
Heini Wernli