under a Creative Commons License. Climate of the Past Discussions Interactive comment on “Reconstructing glacier-based climates of LGM Europe and Russia – Part 3: Comparison with GCM and pollen-based

General comments This paper addresses an important topic for understanding the climate system. It tests the ability of GCM models to reconstruct the Last Glacial Maximum temperatures in Europe and Russia, in order to reliably predict future climatic change. The conclu-sion of this work highlights again the discrepancies between the GCM temperature anomalies (modern minus glacial temperatures) and those from previous pollen and new glacier-based reconstructions for this time period. The underestimation of sim-ulated LGM temperatures could result from modelled modern conditions that are too S736 cold and LGM temperatures that could be too warm. Seasonality and model parame-terisation effects can change the magnitude of the under prediction but still they do not match the reconstructed LGM temperatures. I think that this paper deserves publica-tion but only if authors take into consideration the serious and little recognised problem of the unreliable chronology associated with pollen sites and glaciers and, therefore, the potential amalgamation of LGM and Heinrich (H) event climatic records