Dear authors,

First, I’d like to apologise for the very long delay it took us to come back to you. As you have seen, we have now 3 reviewers’ reports and your responses to their comments. I’m convinced you should be able to respond to most of their comments and hence improve your manuscript accordingly.

I’m particular sensitivie to the comments made about the repetition of some the information in the current version of the manuscript with another manuscript submitted to the same special issue, and to the comments about the limitations of the MADCOW model that need to be made clearer in a new version of the manuscript. I would also advise to focus the discussion on the new insights instead of summarizing earlier work.

I would be happy to receive a revised version of your manuscript.
Again, thanks for your submitting your best work to Biogeosciences, and my apologies for the long delay.

Yous sincerely,
Laurent Bopp