Small technical corrections plus a few larger comments. Some suggestions allow author discretion but in those cases some explanation also needed.

Small change in status to give opportunity and time for final editorial review. No additional comments or requirements at this time.

Overall, the authors have provided skilful and helpful answers, responses or changes to meet reviewers concerns.

Small concern remains about whether inclusion of the 2015 predicted emissions adds value to this data. The authors make a persuasive case that the historical and statistically reliable data enable such a projection, that such a projection adds potential interest and relevance to a larger audience, and that these projections have served a useful prior purpose within the annual budgets and across the sequence of budgets. This editor accepts the authors' reasons.

The as-published paper will require a tested and working doi pointing to the data on the CDIAC site.

Either in final up-load or during type setting and proofing, a small series of typos need correction:

- p9 L2: “minising”

-p9 L20: "totals will be to be slightly"

- p21 L7: Remove “boundary conditions”? The example given (whether fire management is included or not) is not a boundary condition but a question of definition.

- p22 L18: Replace “some of” by “a fraction of“

- p32, 37 and caption to Figure 8 (and perhaps elsewhere): There is a sign error in the formulae? E_LUC, S_LAND and S_OCEAN are all positive (equation 1). Hence what is meant here is S_LAND - E_LUC, or on p37 L6 and in caption to Figure 8: S_LAND + S_OCEAN - E_LUC.

- Table 1: Ballantyne et al. 2012 actually use 2.124 for the conversion of ppm to GtC. The calculations were done with this factor and are just reported here with
rounded numbers? However the GtCO2 to GtC conversion factor is not rounded… Perhaps better to state here the unrounded ppm to GtC factor.

- Excel spreadsheet: Would help the user of the spreadsheet if the meaning of the red numbers in the carbon budget spreadsheet were explicitly mentioned in the description.

- p49 L16: "in press. in press."