The reviewers have adequately responded to the scientific issues raised by the reviewers and I am happy to accept the manuscript from that perspective. There are, however, some presentational matters that I am not happy with. These should be dealt with by the reviewers before submitting a final version.

The clarity of the text could be improved, in particular, where the text has been modified in revision. Some of this is more than a copy editing task, as the meaning is not always clear. In not making the manuscript clear, the authors will be doing themselves a disservice. The authors should carefully check the manuscript for clarity before submitting the final version.

Some suggestions of where the clarity could be enhanced include lines 14,15 and 26,27 on page 2, line 20 on page 5

The font used for variables (italic or not) is sometimes inconsistent in displayed equations and in the text. This should be corrected.

The figures are not high enough resolution. For instance, the white contours on figure 4 are not very clear and when one zooms in the labels are blurred. Either use much higher resolution images for bitmaps or a vector format.

The authors should check for inconsistencies between the track changes version and revised manuscript. I spotted a stray MOW in the revised manuscript which wasn’t in the track changes version. Gulf of Cadiz appears in the track changes version in some locations where GoC appears in the revised manuscript.

In addition, Gulf of Cadiz occasionally appears instead of GoC in both versions. If GoC is
defined then it should be used consistently.

There is no need to define THC as it is never used.

Table 1 should be referred to where the observational datasets are introduced.

On page 4 line 22, is the subscript is (which seems odd as a subscript) meant to take the values, is=1, 2, 3, 4. If so state that.

On page 5 line 16/7. There is some confusion of the boxes. It is stated that there are nine boxes x_1 too x_36. This is the first we hear of 9 boxes, but 9 boxes are introduced later in section 3.2. Please make this clear.

On page 6 line 26, do you mean intra-annual rather than inter-annual?

Figure 5 should not include temperature and salinity sections if they are not going to be discussed at all (which the authors make clear). This would allow the oxygen section to be larger and more clear.