Dear Gary and co-authors,

Thank you for revising your manuscript following receipt of reviewers' comments.

On the whole, I felt that you had addressed the lion's share of the comments. However, I have one suggestion.

The last comment from the 2nd reviewer stated that it would be useful if there were some diagrams illustrating how the various graphed quantities influence and feedback on each other. I acknowledge that Reviewer 1 felt that the results were clearly and attractively presented. However, this is the view of Reviewer 1 and it is not sufficient to address Reviewer 2's request.

Therefore, as a middle ground, may I suggest that you include a schematic illustrating the chain of interactions that follows methane release? This need not be quantitative as Reviewer 2 may be suggesting but simply a schematic along the lines of Figure 1. I think this would go some way to addressing this reviewer's comment and will aid readers' interpretation of your results.

I trust that this is feasible and following this revision, I will be more than happy to recommend that your manuscript is published in GMD.

Regards,
Fiona O'Connor