Dear Claudia,
Thank you for the revised manuscript. The paper has improved substantially, and both referees are satisfied with your revisions (the second referee confirmed to me personally- no report submitted). Please note the missing couple of references pointed to by referee # 1. When preparing the final version, please also address my following comments:

I find your response to the following points of referee#1 not thorough enough. The comment number (c#) refers to the reviewer 1's comment number, followed by my comment.

c11: vertical extent. You are presenting vertical profiles (in the upper 500 m). Vertical extent typically refers to a thickness of the eddy based on a threshold. This is confusing. As is, in the response, you still do not explain how you define the extent. I do not think a definition of extent is necessary (as you do not discuss it). But I suggest you reword to vertical structure or profile.


c13: You still don't explain or discuss why they are different. Also you do not seem to take any action in the manuscript in response to this comment.


c14: This is not a good argument for not comparing (i.e., to reduce workload of the ROMS coauthors), especially when this is a model comparison paper.


c18. You still do not discuss the sensitivity to 100 m. The new text only motivates the choice but does not discuss the sensitivity to the choice.


Furthermore, please consider the following minor details (line numbers refer to the manuscript file version 3):

li 114: replace axes with axis (two occurrences)

li 115: use italic for "a" in "a-1"

li 127: move definition of f, Coriolis parameter to line 146.

li 151-153: please quantify, if possible, or remove "Most of the eddies...... detected a bit more eddies."

li 161: in describing how you obtained the EKE equation, did you miss one step (removing the MKE before multiplying by
u')?

li 199-200, can remove all the "~", and use "about" once or twice.

li 240: replace absolute values with intensity

li 241: quantify "slightly more intensive"

li 293: replace "at the semi-diurnal critical latitude" with "poleward of the semi-diurnal critical latitude".....

li 296: Vertical structure or profile instead of vertical extent (throughout)

li 304: shouldn't this be the opposite: salinity stratified and unstable in temperature?

li 348-350: monthly mean v in the dxx could use an overbar, like in line 342.

li 380: away from the generation sites (instead of where their seeds originally appeared)

li 448: eddy radius is 5-6 km

Fig 12, panel c, we now use APE -> EKE. caption line 1, what is HRS? line 2: (c,d), available potential energy to eddy kinetic....

Fig 13 caption: overbars on v


Thank you,

Ilker