Dear Markus:

Two referees have thoroughly evaluated your manuscript and provided constructive feedback. In your reply you addressed most of it adequately and I therefore invite you to submit a revised version of your manuscript. This revision might be evaluated again before a final pending decision will be made.

I am looking forward receiving a revised manuscript.

With best regards,

Jack Middelburg, Associate Editor

Dear Drs. Krishna and Schartau:

Your revised version has been evaluated again by one of the referees. She/he believes that you have adequately revised your manuscript, but identified the need to rewrite your abstract. I agree with this assessment. Your abstract is still rather technical and e.g. the first five lines are more for an introduction than an abstract. Please put some efforts in rewriting it and consult the feedback of the referee.
While reading I also identified some minor technical corrections.
- Try to limit the use of abbreviation further: why DA and not just data assimilation, and more of these: it will improve the readability.
- You use a zero-dimensional model because you assume that they were well mixed. This is fine. Communicate to the reader that you also assume no light gradient (or did you?), while there was of course a light gradient.
- P.2, l. 26 mesocosms that included
- P3., l.10 bulk non-calcifying
- P.3, l. 12 ratio of calcification to net
- P.3, l. 28 light gradient resolved here?
- P.13, l. 9 probability
- P.13, l. 10: introduce term CDF
- P. 14, l. 11: add space between lines
- P. 15, l. 8: delete manage before the entire

Once again thank you for submitting this paper to Biogeosciences.

With best regards, Jack Middelburg, Associate Editor.