March 8, 2016
Editor Review
Interannual variability of the Mediterranean trophic 
regimes from ocean color satellites, by Mayot et al.


Dear Dr. Mayot,
Thanks for providing a second version of your article. Your paper provides consistent results to identify phenology of phytoplankton in the Med Sea, evaluated for more than a decade. There are several comments from both reviewers that were responded satisfactorily but corrections were not included in version 2 (please see below).


1. Check missing reference:
Han, J., Kamber, M. and Pei, J.: Data Mining: Concepts and Techniques, third Edn., The Morgan Kaufmann Series in Data Management Systems, Morgan Kauf- mann, Boston, 2011.

2. Where is the following text you mentioned in response to reviewer K. Tsiaras?
“#7) “By “minimum rate of change” (e.g P14948, L25) I guess you mean negative values, describing a stronger decrease. You can add a note in the text to make this more apparent.”
Author’s response: The referee is right. We changed: Page 14948, line 25 – “. . .whereas the dates of the minimum rate of change (i.e. the date of the lowest first derivative of the nChl time series). . .” with “. . .whereas the dates of the minimum rate of change (i.e. the date of the lowest first derivative of the nChl time series, the most negative value). . . ”
3. Page 13, line 28. I agree with Reviewer K Tsiaras. Why bimodal pattern? Term “bimodal pattern” is still in v2 of manuscript.
4. Considered separately is still in version 2. Interannual approach is more accurate
5. I agree with comment of reviewer asking for rephrasing paragraph “13) K. Tsiaras: “P14960, L2 “..more than the deep convection events, the permanent cyclonic circulation in this region was the primary factor inducing favorable conditions for phytoplankton bloom, by bringing the nitracline depths close to surface. Relatively shallow mixed layers.. ” Usually deep convection sites are found in areas with cyclonic circulation due to the dome shape of the density that favours deep mixing and I think the phytoplankton bloom mechanism is mostly related to the vertical mixing. Therefore, the “relatively shallow mixed layers” might be misleading. I suggest you rephrase this.”
Version should include modified sentence (““This uplift of the nitracline by the cyclonic circulation should allow an efficient replenishment of nitrate at the surface.”).
6. I agree with comment: Page 14945, Line 20 : Replace “respectively 8 days and 9Km” with “9 Km and 8 days respectively”. ”
7. Idem “-Page 14947, Line 12 : Replace “from of all” with “from all”
8. Idem “-Fig1: Replace “all years conbined” with “all years combined”
9. Idem “-Page 14960, Line 23 : Replace “is confirmed as be strongly impacted” with ““is con- firmed to be strongly impacted”
10. Idem, “-Page 14962, Line 8 : Replace “have been hide” with “have been hidden” or “have been masked”.
11. Idem “-Page 14962, Line 8 : Replace “artifactual regime produce” with “artifactual regime produced”
12. “> We agree with all technical corrections made by K. Tsiaras and modified the manuscript and all the figures by considering all these corrections. The manuscript was also proofread by an English native speaker. ”
Version 2 does not contain some of those changes
13. You agreed with Reviewer Dr. Volpe responding “We agree with the referee. We modified the discussion (Sect. 4.2.1 and 4.2.2) by adding comments on the influence of the intracellular chlorophyll adjustments on the surface chlorophyll-a concentration. We also add some estimations of this influence when available in the literature.
We added after the line 8, Page 14957 – “However, in winter the daily Photosyntheti- cally Available Radiation (PAR) at sea surface is also reduced. In response, the intra- cellular chlorophyll content in the phytoplankton cells increases (i.e. photoacclimatation process), which leads to an increase in the chlorophyll to carbon biomass ratio (e.g. Behrenfeld et al., 2005), and could in part contribute to the observed variations of the nChl in these “No Bloom” bioregions.”
We re-wrote the paragraph at line 27, Page 14959 – “However recent results from profiling floats measuring the [Chl] and the particle mass concentration, suggest also that in this region the photoacclimatation process could contribute to the change in the observed [Chl]surf (up to 70%, Mignot et al., 2014).””.
Those new paragraphs never made it to version 2 of your article. Please check
14. New references were not added to proper section (Behrenfeld et al. and Mignot et al.)
15. Fig. 1. What is “statistically pertinent”? Do you mean statistically significant? If that, please use proper statistical nomenclature
16. I agree with reviewer Dr. Volpe regarding unclear sentence “G. Volpe: “Page 14947, line 15 - (. . .which is a criterion based on. . .) is unclear and should be rephrased”
17. Idem for comment “G. Volpe: “Page 14950, line 2 – substitute compare with compared”
(Author’s response: Page 14950, line 2 – We replaced “...compare to the “No Bloom #2”...” with “. . . compared to the “No Bloom #2”. )
This change is not in version 2
Several other minor changes suggested by both reviewers were not included in version 2 of article, and some of them make a more clear presentation of your work.
Looking forward to hearing from you about a revised version that incorporate necessary changes in the article

Sincerely yours


Silvio Pantoja
Associate Editor