Dear Co-authors,

Thank you for responding thoroughly to the suggestions of the two reviewers. Based on the second assessment of both reviewers, and my own careful reading, I find that the revised manuscript has been significantly improved and is now nearly ready for publication. Before final acceptance, please make the minor corrections suggested by the reviewer, as listed below.

Line 25: ”upper ocean’s” to ”upper ocean”
Line 27: “is” to “are”
Line 30: “SMS dynamics is” to “SMS dynamics are”
Lines 65-90: could be cut down on (nice to read, but there’s a lot of info there about what the paper is about to contain) – optional comment

Thank you for submitting this interesting paper to Ocean Science, and many thanks to both reviewers for their helpful suggestions and comments,
Agnieszka Beszczynska-Möller