We appreciate the interest by our colleagues (Vogt et al., 2008) in Wingenter et al. (2007), in which we presented a possible means of lowering the temperature over the Southern Ocean (SO) region. The best application of our proposal may be to cool the surface temperature, which would reduce sea-level rise (i) by slowing sea water expansion; and (ii) by diminishing the breakup of Antarctic coastal ice shelves, which buttress glacial flow into the SO. Our paper had two main intentions: first to encourage modeling studies in this direction, and secondly to show that large-scale iron fertilization for the purpose of carbon sequestration could have severe negative impacts by overcooling the region. Vogt et al. raised several concerns about our initial calculations, which we clarifv below.
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