Dear Authors
Thank-you again for your revised manuscript. One referee has reviewed it again and is now content. I think your revised manuscript already answered the comments of the other original referee. Below are comments of my own (already sent to you?) which I think you should now consider in a “minor revision”.
Yours sincerely
John Huthnance (editor)

Referee 1 point 4; choice of 30m for upper-layer depth. You refer to the maximum of N^2, but that is very weak and larger values occur not far below. Also figure 10 shows two very different profiles. I wonder if currents’ vertical structure or depth-coherence might give a reason for the choice?

Title, lines 4, 6, 16, 17, 67, 134 (and others?) Better to omit “stream”. “jet stream” is used for an atmospheric phenomenon.

Line 46. Better “and proven analytically by . .”
Line 50. Better “and dissipation and reduced decay time . .”
Line 56. “~10.3” -> “~10”

Line 101. “fresh” -> “fresh-water”

Lines 234-235. “more than 80% of the peak value of the AKEni in the upper layer (~1000 J m^-2)”. No, neither figure 7b or the values in the text (1500, 1000) show “more than 80%”. “(~1000 . . )” needs moving to follow immediately after what it refers to.
Line 242. “the deep layer reached its maximum value >10 days later”. “later” than what? Probably this text can be omitted, c.f. line 239.
Line 318. “12f” -> “11f”?

Lines 329 and 333, 335, 337. You already defined AKEni and you don’t need it here; (4) is not depth-integrated.

Line 442. “transporting KEni in the ML into the deeper layers through inertial pumping (upwelling).” Why “upwelling” here when you are discussing transport to deeper?
Line 443. “upwelling, caused by the TC-enhanced divergence” is OK, but omit “The” at the end of line 442.

Figures 1, 10, 13, 14. The captions in the “List of Figures” and under the figure are different. [In the list, the last line of figure 13 caption is misplaced and appears after figure 14 caption]
Figure 8. “A1”, “A2”, “C1”, “C2” might be written in black for visibility and consistency with the dots.

Dear Authors
Thank-you for your re-revised manuscript. I am now asking only for some “Technical corrections”, see comments below, after which you should upload your manuscript for publication in Ocean Science. I do not need to see it again. There will be copy-editing and you should check that your intended meaning is kept.
Thank-you for publishing in Ocean Science.
Yours sincerely
John Huthnance (editor)

Comments
Line 21. “. . frequency,” (add “,”)
Lines 42-43. At present this seems to say that the β-effect reduces the NIO decay time scale. I think you want “the β-effect leads to equatorward propagation of the NIOs and their decay time scale is reduced because of the vertical propagation . . .”
Line 50. Delete redundant “the dissipation and”
Line 52. “. . related to a front . .” [because a front was not mentioned previously]
Line 68. Omit “stream”? Maybe you just want “. . background flow over the”
Line 81. “. . pressure) 948 hPa . .” (Omit first “at”).

Line 158. “spectra” -> “spectrum”.
Line 166. Omit “the” at end.
Line 203. You could omit “, which rotated in the direction of the Earth’s rotation,”
Line 204. If “within ~1 day” refers to “dissipated quickly” rather than how quickly the wind forcing stopped then better “dissipated quickly, within ~1 day after the wind forcing stopped. This short duration . . .”
Line 208. I do not understand “back”. Omit?
Line 229. “. . out of the”
Line 285. “smaller increasing rate” -> “smaller rate of increase”
Line 305. “constrain” -> “constraining”
Lines 452-453. “. . . meantime upwelling, caused . .” [meantime one word; move “,”]

Figure 8 caption. Line 2: “read” -> “red”. Lines 3-4. I am puzzled; the orange curve arrows look like positive relative vorticity, the blue curve arrows look like negative relative vorticity, the opposite of what you state for “zeta”. Line 4: “yellows” -> “arrows”.

Figure 12 capton. Lines 2-4 refer to panels (d-f), (g-i), (j-l) but there are only panels (a-c) in the figure.