Response to the comments on “Soil fluxes of carbonyl sulfide (COS), carbon monoxide, and carbon dioxide in a boreal forest in southern Finland”

Soil is a major contributor to the biosphere–atmosphere exchange of carbonyl sulfide (COS) and carbon monoxide (CO). COS is a tracer to quantify terrestrial photosynthesis based on the coupled leaf uptake of COS and CO2, but such use requires separating soil COS flux, which is unrelated to photosynthesis, from ecosystem COS uptake. For CO, soil is a significant natural sink that influences the tropospheric CO budget. In the boreal forest, magnitudes and variabilities of soil COS and CO fluxes remain poorly understood. We measured hourly soil fluxes of 5 COS, CO, and CO2 over the 2015 late growing season (July to November) in a Scots pine forest in Hyytiälä, Finland. The soil acted as a net sink of COS and CO, with average uptake rates around 3 pmol m≠2 s≠1 for COS and 1 nmol m≠2 s≠1 for CO, respectively. Soil respiration showed seasonal dynamics controlled by soil temperature, peaking at around 4 μmol m≠2 s≠1 in late August and September and dropping to 1–2 μmol m≠2 s≠1 in October. In contrast, seasonal variations of COS and CO fluxes were weak and mainly driven by soil moisture changes through di usion 10 limitation. COS and CO fluxes did not appear to respond to temperature variation, although they both correlated well with soil respiration in specific temperature bins. However, COS : CO2 and CO : CO2 flux ratios increased with temperature, suggesting possible shifts in active [.. ]COSand CO-consuming microbial groups. Our results show that soil COS and CO fluxes do not have strong variations over the late growing season in this boreal forest, and can be represented with the fluxes during the photosynthetically most active period. Well characterized and relatively 15 invariant soil COS fluxes strengthen the case for using COS as a photosynthetic tracer in boreal forests.