Response to comments on “Saturation of the Southern Ocean CO2 sink due to recent climate change”

We estimated a weakening of the Southern Ocean carbon dioxide (CO2) sink since 1981 relative to the trend expected from the large increase in atmospheric CO2. We agree with Law et al. that network choice increases the uncertainty of trend estimates but argue that their network of five locations is too small to be reliable. A future reversal of Southern Ocean CO2 saturation as suggested by Zickfeld et al. is possible, but only at high atmospheric CO2 concentrations, and the effect would be temporary.

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