Dear Dr. Badger:

Thank you for submitting this nice work to Biogeosciences. Your paper received feedback from Joep van Dijk and was formally evaluated by two referees. They were enthusiastic about your paper and I agree with them. Moreover, your rebuttal clearly indicates that you can resolve the minor issues identified. I therefore invite you to submit a revised version that, after inspection by me, will likely be acceptable for publication.

With best regards, Jack Middelburg, Associate Editor

Dear Dr. Badger:

Thank you for submitting your revised version to Biogeosciences. I have read your revision and I am happy to inform you that your paper is now accepted for publication pending technical corrections. While reading, I identified quite some typos, inconsistent spelling and incomplete sentences. Also, there are some floating sentences that could be merged to arrive at clear paragraphs. I propose that you implement the minor issues identified below, run your text through a spelling checker and then upload the files for production.

With best regards, Jack Middelburg, Associate Editor

Technical corrections:
- line 30-32: logic of sentence needs attention.
- line 32: separated
- line 58, delete comma before through
- line 54: incomplete sentence
- line 71: G. oceanica in italic
- line 104: constant
- line 111: carbon isotopic
- line 132: parameterization
- line 160-174: There are multiple one sentence paragraph. Re-organize into clear paragraphs with take-home messages
- line 174-180 and all through: r2 is coefficient of determination and r is correlation coefficient. There are related but not the same.
- line 193: across rather than across
- line 239: existence?