The reviewer finds the manuscript is improved compared to the previous version. Please consider their outstanding minor comments in the attached file and submit a revised manuscript which I will consider.

Best regards
Amanda Maycock

Thank you for accommodating the suggestions of reviewer 2. I am happy to accept the paper subject to one technical correction. In the revised manuscript you added a sentence and I suggest rewording it as follows, line 4 of page 10: “In contrast, the changes of MCA_Z500 in all experiments are not statistically significant, which might be attributable to the need for larger ensemble sizes to detect dynamically-modulated responses (e.g., SLP and geopotential height anomalies) as compared to thermally-direct responses (e.g., vertical temperature gradient anomalies and their effects on PPI) (Screen et al., 2014).”