See detailed comments, attached. 

The authors are to be again greatly complimented for their work, for the outstanding number of data sources used, performed analysis, as well as for the continuous inclusion of new products.

General comments

I was again a bit overwhelmed with the length of the paper, however, it looks like it shortened a little compared to previous versions.

I find the Executive summary and the highlighted key messages of great use. I would only suggest consistency between the information provided in each paragraph, as highlighted below, in the line by line suggestions.

Line by line suggestions (as appearing in the supplement track changes document):

Abstract: great to see the inclusion of the ESMs and CDRs estimates as well as inversion systems using both satellites and surface observations (OCO-2 and GOSAT).

Executive summary:

L846: Please add the value for deforestation in 2022 compared to 2019 similarly done for the CO2 fossil?

L789 and L858: the increased concentration of CO2 is 51%, could be mentioned as well on line 789 instead of saying more than 50%

In general I agree with RC1 about comparing estimates for the pre-, post- and pandemic years, if authors want to exclude pandemic years as being atypical, then only 2022 compared to 2019 is enough, with a clear sentence of projection (2023) in the end.

Introduction

L1197: because 2023 is a projection, I would think of using 2022 instead, to compare it with 2019.

Methods

L1533: first time RECCAP is mentioned, please add the weblink

L1638,1641,1704 etc.: consistent use of wording for the numbers throughout the manuscript is needed, now it’s a mix of words and numbers.

L2063: regarding the following paragraph “…relatively constant over the 1960-1999 period. Since the 1990s they have shown a slight decrease of about 0.1 GtC per decade, reaching 1.3 ± 0.7 GtC yr-1 for the 2013-2022 period (Table 7)”

What happened between 2000-2013?

Should 1999 be 1990? Or “since the 2000s”?

L2297: Perhaps add the projection value of Powis et al., 2023 for blue carbon CDR?

L2341 NGHGI already explained at L1333, L1047 and Tables…keep please the first and the rest NGHGI

L2341 and paragraphs after: the authors discuss the subtractions between DGVMs and bookkeeping models to match the NGHGIs estimates, I would suggest they mention that NGHGIs apply only to Annex I Parties while FAOSTAT is used for the non-Annex I. Also, FAOSTAT has global coverage, do they use a mix of the two? I would understand that the GCB estimates which match very closely the NGHGIs refer only to Annex I.

L3594: Interesting inclusion of the RECCAP2 regions paragraph given that not all regions submitted their papers, I assume authors received the agreement of the chapter-lead authors to generate this preview of RECCAP2 results. I would suggest a sentence to clearly mention this.

L4049: “emission declines in the USA and the EU27 are primarily driven by slightly weaker economic growth” needs a reference ?

Tables and figures

Table 9: please explain to which countries you refer to for the NGHGIs

Figure 2: please add a sentence to explain what the uncertainties represent

Figure 16: I would add what positive/negative values mean