Dear Authors,

Thank you for submitting your manuscript for publication in the Biogeosciences Journal.

Your manuscript has been reviewed by two referees. Both referees agreed that the manuscript is very well written and presents original work with strong relevance to the scope of Biogeosciences. Using a combination of field observations and satellite ocean color retrievals, this study provides novel insights on the impacts of extreme events on phytoplankton structure community dynamics in estuarine waters.

The two referees made several suggestions for improvement of the manuscript. These comments have been addressed in the Authors’ responses to the referees’ comments. As suggested by the reviewers, the errors associated with the phytoplankton pigment retrievals should be more clearly reported in the manuscript. It would be helpful if, in addition to Table 4, you could include some more discussion in paragraph 3.2.4 on the errors in the phytoplankton pigment retrievals, why retrievals for specific pigments (e.g., peridinin) have larger errors, and how they compare with other studies.

Thank you for submitting your manuscript for publication in the Biogeosciences Journal and I look forward to receiving your revised manuscript.

Maria Tzortziou
Editor, Biogeosciences

Dear Authors,

Thank you for submitting your revised manuscript and response to reviewers' comments. I have read your revised version and I am happy to inform you that your manuscript is now accepted for publication in Biogeosciences.

Best regards,
Maria Tzortziou
Editor, Biogeosciences