Dear Dr Stöven,

I am pleased to tell you that your revised paper can be accepted for publication in Ocean Science. Congratulations! The reviewer who asked for major revisions in the first review round is pleased with your reply and the changes in the manuscript. He only spotted a few minor issues that you should correct. The full report is enclosed below.

With kind regards,
Andreas Sterl

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Referee report:

The authors addressed most of my comments, even though there is a sort of disagreement between our opinions. Nevertheless, they have made an effort to improve the first version of the manuscript, they were also able to defend their statement. I must say I have also broadened my knowledge during this reviewing process.

Thus, I suggest accepting this version of manuscript for publishing in the Ocean Science. I only propose making a few technical corrections, as follows:

line 172 - the Fram Strait
line 613 - anthropogenic
line 622 - the information about velocities should be corrected
line 653 - Barents
line 723 - the Return Atlantic Water still exists in the manuscript - check also in the lines below and in the figures
line 834 - Spitsbergen

Figures:

Fig. 2. Shouldn't it be dbar instead of dBar?
Fig. 11. Shouldn't it be 200m as in Fig. 9? And what about station 15 - which data were used for this plot? Clarify the description, please.