Reply on RC2

The paper "Reviews and syntheses: Enhancing research and monitoring of land-to atmosphere greenhouse gases exchange in developing countries" provides further insight into addressing the key knowledge gaps regarding the accurate quantification of carbon stocks and greenhouse gas dynamics in developing countries. While this is a valid topic, in relation to the lack of research infrastructure in these regions, this has already been addressed in several other recent publications that approach this issue from multiple cross domain perspectives. The novelty in this paper is not just the identification of gaps and priorities (as this has been documented elsewhere), but it is how this can be addressed.

The paper "Reviews and syntheses: Enhancing research and monitoring of land-to atmosphere greenhouse gases exchange in developing countries" provides further insight into addressing the key knowledge gaps regarding the accurate quantification of carbon stocks and greenhouse gas dynamics in developing countries. While this is a valid topic, in relation to the lack of research infrastructure in these regions, this has already been addressed in several other recent publications that approach this issue from multiple cross domain perspectives. The novelty in this paper is not just the identification of gaps and priorities (as this has been documented elsewhere), but it is how this can be addressed.
Response: As the reviewer indicated, there are various on-going efforts to identify uncertainties caused by lack of carbon and greenhouse gases (GHG) research in developing countries. We agree the novelty of this paper is how lack of carbon and GHG research can be addressed. Thus, in our study we wanted to synthetize the current situation and then share ideas and suggestions for enhancing research and monitoring of carbon and GHG exchange in developing countries. In particular, the appropriate technology and approach (AT&A) and its application for GHG research were introduced and their potentials and limitations were discussed. The aim was to contribute to the analysis and discussion for a solution the needed but missing observations globally.
In this paper, the potential solutions are presented through the description of how a focus on the application, or potential application of AT&A approaches can be used to enhance our understanding in these areas. The manuscript in its current form represents a "thinkpiece" or discussion paper rather than a standard scientific paper and presents a very general overview of the background requirements and application of AT&A approaches rather than the "review and synthesis" as indicated in the title. Further details are required in many parts to provide insight into the technological developments and how these can really be implemented and utilised by the variety of stakeholders who would find this information useful.

Response:
We agree with this comment, which was also made by Reviewer 1. In fact, due to a lack of data on AT&A and its application for GHG research on the ground, at this stage it was not possible to write a conventional review and synthesis paper on AT&A for GHG research, their use, and their potential contribution. (Although there are a few research projects currently ongoing in Europe and the US to evaluate the contribution of these technologies.) Thus, this study aimed to share ideas and suggestions of AT&A and its application for enhancing research and monitoring of carbon and GHG exchange in developing countries. In fact, we originally planned to submit the manuscript as "Ideas and Perspectives" (https://www.biogeosciences.net/about/manuscript_types.html) but due to the length limit ("a few pages only") we had to submit as "Review and Synthesis". After a more detailed check however we found that there are Ideas and Perspective papers in Biogeosciences with a length comparable or longer than our manuscript (e.g., Wilson et al. 2020-Biogeosciences, 17, 5809-5828, https://doi.org/10.5194/bg-17-5809-2020. So, our plan, if we will have the chance, would be to resubmit it under "Ideas and Perspectives" category, adding references to the ongoing activities in Europe and USA on the use of the AT&T technologies, and strengthening the paper's insights about application and implementation.
I also agree with R1 in that the paper does not just deal with greenhouse gas exchange and could be revised to better represent the information presented.

Response:
We recognize that the title should include "carbon" to better reflect the contents of the manuscript. Therefore, if we can resubmit the manuscript as "Idea and Perspective" we will clearly change the title to make it more in line with the content as below for instance.