The manuscript HGSS-2021-1, posted as journal article on 26 May 2021, was removed on 10 September 2021 after applying a post-publication review that resulted in a rejection of the manuscript.

Background: Copernicus Publications – and thereby all our journals – are members of COPE, the Committee on Publication Ethics, and explicitly subscribe to COPE's code of conduct for journal editors and guide for peer reviewers. It has been brought to our attention that the article 'The temperature–CO₂ climate connection: an epistemological reappraisal of ice-core messages' by Pascal Richet (posted as journal article on 26 May 2021, see the latest version of the manuscript) may not have met the standard of fair and impartial peer review. In the interest of transparency, we summarized relevant aspects of the case on 8 June 2021 in the Copernicus statement on the review process of manuscript HGSS-2021-1. We decided to temporarily bar access to the article and perform a post-publication review, as recommended by COPE in such cases. On 25 June 2021, the author of the paper wrote a personal reply to the Copernicus statement on the review process.

The post-publication review was handled by Jean-Claude Duplessy as editor. 7 referees were called and submitted their report – 6 of these anonymous, 1 eponymous – between 28 June and 30 August 2021. In the interest of transparency, the 7 referee reports are provided in 1 merged document. Based on these 7 referee reports, the editor decided on 31 August 2021 to reject the manuscript.

On 10 September 2021, the author of the manuscript was informed about the outcome, the paper was removed, and the note on removal was posted under the URL/DOI of the originally-posted journal article. Please consider the post-publication rejection and removal status if you downloaded the originally-posted paper earlier.