Dear Dr. Xu,

Many thanks for your detailed responses. You had a significant number of referee reports to deal with, but they were all generally supportive, albeit that all had a range of comments attached. I think that you managed to address all queries well, but before a final acceptance, I would like to see the revised manuscript in full. So please upload the manuscript including all revisions as outlined in your responses.

I look forward to seeing the revised version!

Best regards,
Jens-Arne Subke

Dear Dr Xu,

Many thanks for uploading the revised manuscript.

This manuscript represents a considerable volume of work, and I congratulate you for completing such a comprehensive literature review. My hope is that this publication will serve as an important reference for methane modelling, measuring and data integration activities, facilitating the development of the next generation of models.

The text reads well, and I think you managed to incorporate the referees’ comments well. I have a few further (mostly minor) edits below , which I would like to ask you to change on the latest version, which will then be ready for final acceptance.

With best regards,
Jens-Arne Subke


Manuscript comments:

There is a tendency to use many citations, when a point could be supported by a section of references. For example, do you need all 12 references to make the point that ecosystem modelling is a broadly used tool (lines 42-47)? It is within the nature of a review paper that you include most of the literature written on the subject, but in the introduction, I think that a more selective approach to introduce the background to your manuscript would work better.

Line 81: Add “further” after “This review”.

Line 95/96: Do you need citations here?

Line 67: Figure 2 does not demonstrate an increase in the number of models

Line 212: Delete “of them”.

Line 340: Delete “directly”. (“Direct incorporation” into models is confusing, when you talk also of direct and indirect drivers).

Line 357: “an important”, rather than “another important”.

Line 365: “moisture effects”, rather than “moisture’s effects”.

Line 375: Delete “is another important factor that”.

Line 410: Add “The” before “IAP-RAP model”.

Line 418: “changes in CH4 flux have…”, rather than “has”.

Line 430: Add “or” before “anaerobic”.

Lines 486-488: This is confusing, and needs to be rephrased. I suggest an alternative here, but please check carefully if this expresses what you want to say here: “Iron and sulfate biogeochemistry has so far been modelled implicitly by only a few models, as mechanisms are as yet poorly understood, and there is a paucity of data. Accordingly, these processes have not been incorporated into recently developed models, and a more explicit inclusion, based on improved biogeochemical understanding, will hopefully be achieved in the long term.

Line 498: Comma after “identified”.

Lines 503/504: Rephrase to:”One well-known mechanism is aerobic…”

Lines 508/509: Please rephrase to: “The second mechanism is CH4 production by fungi (Lenhart et al 2012).”

Line 614: Reference to pers. Communications not needed here.

Page 55: Figure legends:
Figure 1: Delete “The” at beginning of sentence. Replace “at decadal scale” (which implies a sale over which models are applied) by “over recent decades”.

Figure 3: Do you mean “three”, or “the”?

Page 57 (Figure 2): This is poorly formatted. The x-axis tick labels are not fully represented, and the overall size could be bigger. Please also remove dashed background lines in the chart area. Rather than open and hatched columns, I suggest solid fill for all data series, with white, grey and black as fill colours.

Dear Dr. Xu,

Many thanks for the quick response. I'm happy for this paper to be published in this form.

With best regards,
Jens-Arne Subke