In your reply to referee #2 you wrote: "While the individual data are available, they are part of another ongoing project and therefore if reviewer/reader requires this data in more detail, we will gladly provide it on request." I disagree with this approach. The underlying data do belong to the manuscript being considered for publication in BG (even though they can be used in another project). Furthermore, how a reader in, say, 10 years time will locate you and the data?! As I already mentioned, BG strongly promotes the full availability of the data sets reported in the papers that it publishes in order to facilitate future data comparison and compilation as well as meta-analysis. You can either provide a link to the data if they are already archived, for example at BODC. Alternatively, you can provide a text file as supplementary information.

Dear Author,

Thank you for submitting a revised version of your manuscript submitted to Biogeosciences, which I am glad to accept for publication.

I look forward to seeing this paper published and thank you for considering Biogeosciences to publish these very interesting results.

Best regards,
Jean-Pierre Gattuso
BG Editor