Reply to Liu et al.: East Asian summer monsoon rainfall dominates Lake Dali lake area changes.

We thank Liu et al. (1) for their comments on our paper (2). The first point of Liu et al. (1) is that the Lake Dali Early Holocene highstand could reflect increased winter precipitation and/or glacier melt rather than monsoon rainfall. First, modern winter precipitation contributes <10% annual precipitation (2, 3). To sustain the Early Holocene highstand solely based on winter precipitation requires a 10-fold winter precipitation increase. Such a large change in precipitation seasonality would require a massive reorganization of atmospheric circulation, yet there is no evidence that this occurred. Second, the pollen precipitation reconstruction (4) requires a 3-km-thick remnant glacier to sustain the Early Holocene highstand of the lake. The lake hydrological balance is: