Dear Dr. Bennedsen,
I'd like to thank you for your responses to the two reviews that were posted online. Having read these reviews and your responses, I would like to invite you to submit a revised version of your manuscript, in which you would have implemented the suggested modifications. In particular, I would like to see a better contextualization and a more in-depth discussion on the reasons for studying the temporal evolution of the carbon sinks and/or airborne fraction.
Best regards,
Laurent Bopp

Dear Dr. Bennedtsen,
I would like to thank you for the revised version of “Trend analysis of the airborne fraction and sink rate of anthropogenically released CO2”. Your revised version has now been seen by one of the initial reviewer. Based on his/her evaluation and on my own reading of your manuscript, it seems to me that your manuscript is almost ready to be accepted for publication in Biogeosciences.
The revised version is clearly improved over the last one. In particular, the description of the “global carbon budget”, with the precisions on the terms airborne fraction and sink rate, is much clearer. The discussions on distinguishing airborne fraction and sink rate, as well as on the processes potentially leading to a decreasing sink rate are also much appreciated.
I would be happy to consider a new version in which you would follow the recommendations of the 2nd round of review, in particular the ones related to the forecast exercise.
I would also ask you to improve the description of the Global Carbon Budget terms that you use as input variables for your statistical analysis (e.g. the data are not “measured” in GtC – but “given in GtC”, the sink data are not “averages over several model-based estimates”, but a combination of data-based and model-based methods, ….etc).
Best regards, and again, thanks for submitting your best work to Biogeosciences,
Laurent Bopp