Good product, good preparations. Publication recommended by all three reviewers. Suggest you evaluate and respond to comments in two categories: what you can and have fixed/changed in this version and what valid comments you incorporate for future authors and future versions.

A few editorial comments follow:

Lines 207, 208 and 237, 238 and 1468: Andrew et al Cement Budget latest version should have reached publication status in ESSD. Change to ‘in press’ or full as-published reference? Certainly by proof stage?

Line 1189, parentheses wrong? I think you want “(range of 1.8 to 3.7%) published in Le Quéré et al. (2018b) based on national emissions”? Proofreaders will not catch this so you need to ensure you have punctuated it correctly for your intent.

I typically check references, because reviewers typically do not. But what reviewer/editor can evaluate 35 pages of references? I think reviewers found all references as expected in the narrative, but probably publishers need new editing software to check the output of your bibliographic software to confirm the full reference list? Machines checking other machines?

Order of appendices will sort itself. The suggestion by one reviewer to move conclusion section ahead of data availability section and then to finish the narrative with that data availability section seems useful. Many ESSD products follow that sequence.

All reviewers worry about the text in lines 1287-1291. I tend to agree. I see two issues. First, the emerging confusion between this careful carbon source/sink accounting, which you / we properly label as a ‘global carbon budget’ while - as one reviewer confirms - the much-less careful (one might even say ‘casual’ or ‘incautious’?) public and press use the term ‘carbon budget’ to refer to remaining carbon emissions. The research community follows your terminology: what you refer to as “permissible emissions for a given climate stabilization target” in line 97 and as the “”remaining carbon budget”” at lines 1288-1289. The carbon community will need to deal with this growing confusion. You tread carefully here, appreciated, but you may need to deal even more explicitly with ‘remaining carbon’ in the future. Second, and more closely related to the text at 1287-1291, as I read it you have introduced confusion rather than clarity: you urge caution at using cumulative emissions for any purpose but then you seem to encourage remaining carbon estimates by a (relatively) straightforward extrapolation from present day values into the future? You have several options here: a) delete these two sentences; b) keep only the first sentence, perhaps appended to the previous paragraph; or c) revise these sentences to convey a clearer message?

Lines 1405, 1406

In prior versions: “a growing understanding of and improved capacity to anticipate the evolution of the carbon cycle in the future”

In this version: “a better understanding of the causes of climate change, and an improved capacity to anticipate the evolution of the carbon cycle in the future”

The new phrase introduces a new hesitancy? You really do not intend such apparent confusion? (Indeed, why then do we have GGP and annual GCB?). I think you mean “better quantification of” or “better accounting of” in place of ‘better understanding’?