Dear authors,

Thank-you for your revised manuscript, and response to the reviews. There are a few minor issues remaining, as follows.

Table 1: please be consistent in usage of Ku-band (ideally $K_u$)
Table 1: sea-state bias (spelling)

line 159: western Mediterranean Sea
line 167: "Senetosa is operating"? The place can't operate it. Perhaps "Since 1998 a calibration site has operated near the Senetosa lighthouse, with support from..."?
line 176: You could tidy this a little, eg "M4/M5 as a few cm apart, sheltered from the northwest-ward wind, whilst M3 is a 1.7km eastward, more exposed to open-sea conditions. "
Fig 1: Ensure the copyright is correctly handled for the Google earth image - See https://www.ocean-science.net/for_authors/manuscript_preparation.html
line 210: Outliers are omitted in computing the regression line.

line 245, 250 (and check elsewhere): "Figure 4 shows..." or "as shown in Fig. 4"

line 255: Grammar. I suggest: "In coastal areas, precision of sea surface height from altimetry is limited by inaccuracies in some of the applied geophysical corrections (including sea state bias, wet tropospheric correction, dynamical atmospheric correction and ocean tides) and from the distorted shape of the radar waveforms as the satellite approaches land (Vignudelli et al., 2011 and Cipollini et al., 2018).

line 260: Bit vague. I think you mean that data that is not flagged can still have errors due to coastal proximity?

line 265/269 : Try not to switch tense. examined?

line 269: reads like d(ssb)/d(distance to coast). I suggest "We plotted trends in geophysical correction against distance to the coast, for sea-state bias..."

FIg 6b is unnecessary. Suggest line 329 becomes "We resampled the along-track sea-level records keeping only the 80% of data common to all along track positions at a given time."

line 333 cut "then"

Fig 7: as a general rule for color-vision accessibility, avoid red vs green lines. Replot if possible, however it does not significantly affect the message of this figure so I don't insist on it. However in Fig 20 it does matter, please replot.

line 383: full stop.

line 515: cut "well"

Fig 10: would be more intuitive rotated to align with the map. However it is not essential.

Fig 12: It would have been good to see the altimetry results alongside here.

line 595: "it is very unlikely that wave set up explains the reported coastal sea level trend."

lines 604-715: The argument in this section is rambling and hard to follow. It needs tidying up and probably condensing. You can simplify a lot of sentences.

As I understand your argument ...
Could waves explain the SLA trends approaching the coast? SWH at a nearby ERA grid point has little correlation with SLA at 15km, but has some correlation with SLA at the coast, Fig15 & Fig 16a. One mechanism for waves to affect the altimetry corrections is via ssb. SWH at the ERA grid point does not correlate well with ssb near the coast (Fig 16b & Fig 17). So it is possible the wrong ssb is used as an altimetry correction near the coast (slightly better in ALES). Therefore though the waves do correlate with SLA, it's not via ssb, so it's not causal. So despite fig 16a, the argument in the first part of 6.1 still holds? You say you have eliminated waves as the explanation.

However in section 6.2 we learn that the winds are highly seasonal and affect the local currents. Seasonal changes in wind direction would directly affect the local SWH, since sometimes the coast will be sheltered. More localised wind and wave information would be very helpful here. Otherwise I think you can only say that there is no strong evidence for waves and ssb causing the trend in SLA.

If I've got this right it's after a lot of unpicking. Please clarify. If I've got it wrong, then this *really* needs clarifying.

specifics from this section:
line 604: cut "However"
line 609: we consider sea-level anomalies...
line 610: cut "mesh"

line 610: Please indicate the position of the ERA5 grid point you use on one of the maps. ERA5 grid spacing is about 30km so it matters. It is a pity you don't have anything finer resolution here.

line 638-640: No. Fig 16a doesn't show the interannual correlation, because it is swamped by the seasonal signal. You'll have to replot this or at least recalculate R after filtering the seasonal out.

line 693: The correlations are really rather weak here. Suggest "As expected, ssb is correlated with wave height away from the coast, but..." It is difficult to see any relationship from the figure. Replot with the orange ssb curves on a different scale (eg use a right-hand axes).

line 699: You haven't calculated significance. Rephrase.

lines 729-733: could condense this.

Fig 18 & 19: could be combined. And why zonal only? You need the meridional component too to give the along-shore current.

Please indicate 15 km along-track distance on at least one map.

Although you can't derive a trend from the MARS3d model, and it's fair enough to pass on the coastal oceanography to another study, it would be very helpful to do a seasonal comparison, perhaps plot a different season in Fig 18.

line 832: cut "elongated"
line 834: an indication

You have not met all requirements in
https://www.ocean-science.net/for_authors/manuscript_preparation.html
Please attend particularly to data referencing, but check through other requirements as well. Don't rely on the typesetter to find them!
The MARS3d model, ERA5 data (they have a standard format statement required), altimetry data all need correct acknowledgement and statement of where to access the data. This should be in a Data Availability section.

I look forward to receiving your revised manuscript,

Regards,
Dr Joanne Williams

Thank-you for the revised manuscript. I think it is nearly there, but there a still a few remaining corrections that have not been addressed.

Table 1: sea-state bias not biais!

line 246 and elsewhere "Figure 4 shows". See https://www.ocean-science.net/for_authors/manuscript_preparation.html .

Thank-you for the improvements to the text in section 6.1 . I now understand your argument about the ssb correction. Figure 16b still requires improvement. The orange/red curves need to be rescaled to a similar scale to SWH, in order that correlation with the SWH is readily visible. Otherwise you might as well omit it and just quote the correlations, as on the scale provided it shows very little.

Line 574 is not at all clear. 24 km in which direction? Why not just provide a lon/lat? Or as previously suggested, indicate on one of the maps (Fig 18 is probably best). Given the variability in Fig 18, this is relevant.
Please also indicate 15km along-track distance on Fig 18. It would be very helpful for interpreting this figure alongside the along-track plots. The reader can work it out with Google Maps, but shouldn't need to!

Please cite ERA5 reanalysis data as required by ECMWF: see https://confluence.ecmwf.int/display/CKB/ERA5%3A+data+documentation for details.
Please include both the tide gauges and altimetry data in the data availability section. Provide repository links, preferably with DOIs if possible.

And there are still missing elements from https://www.ocean-science.net/for_authors/manuscript_preparation.html . For example, I notice there is no contribution of authors section. Please check this list again thoroughly.