Dear Guillian
Thank-you for your thorough responses to the reviewer comments. In particular, I was pleased to see that you extended your analysis to a multi-model ensemble of the CESM model. Please proceed with submitting the revised manuscript, after which I will give the reviewers the option to take another look at the paper.

I am adding to the comments from the reviewers the following minor points for clarification in your submitted manuscript:

- Mean state of sea ice thickness. Be more specific on how this validation was performed, i.e. satellite data or PIOMAS.

- Appending procedure seems odd as one would expect a unnatural periodicity (i.e. the duration of each ensemble member run). Was this done for the historical (1920-2005) and future scenarios? Clarify the method a little bit more.

- Sign on new figure 1 different. Is that an error?

- Add some comments about how you expect your result to fare with other CMIP models.

Michel Tsamados

Dear Guillian
I am satisfied that you have fully addressed both the reviewers and my comments and that paper can proceed to publication.
Regards
Michel