Dear authors,

I have now received two reviews of the revised version of your manuscript and both reviewers found that the paper has improved significantly. I agree with the reviewers that a minor revision would further improve the paper and ask you to consider and include the specific reviewer comments.

With best regards,

Christian von Savigny (Assoc. editor)

Dear authors,

thank you for the latest version of your manuscript. I have read the manuscript myself again and ask you to consider the following minor comments. Once they have been addressed the paper can be accepted for publication in AMT.

Comments:

Page 2, line 12: “Stratospheric aerosols that mainly originate from volcanic sources are from sulfur dioxide and carbonyl sulfide”

I think something is missing here?

Page 3, line 9: “it’s” -> “its”

Page 4, line 23: “Other time periods known to have low aerosol loading (e.g. 1989- 1990) show lower values of AE in the SAGE II dataset.”

It’s not entirely clear what this statement refers to. Looking at Fig. 1 and 30 km, the AE in 1989/1990 shows a maximum.

Page 5, line 12: “The SAGE III/ISS which developed by”

“which was developed” or just “developed” ?

Page 7, line 10: “SAGE III/SS”

Page 8, line 18: “While the SAGE III/ISS algorithm does not make any assumptions”

This is certainly correct, but perhaps it would better to write “does not require any assumptions” ?

Page 8, line 21: “uncertainties in LP measurements” -> “uncertainties in LP radiance measurements”?

Page 15, line 12: “profilers” -> “profiles”

Page15, line 20: “The results shown that the LP retrievals”

List of references: There are many inconsistencies in the list of references (spaces between initials etc.), please check the AMT style guide and adjust the references accordingly.

Caption Fig. 5: “angels” -> “angles”

Fig. 7: I think something is wrong here. Looking at panels a) and b), the differences below 19 km or so are larger for LP than for SAGE, right? But in panel c) the anomaly is larger for SAGE. This appears inconsistent. Please correct me, if I’m wrong.
Please also mention how the extinction anomaly is defined exactly. What is the reference profile?

Fig. 8: Is it possible, that the two lines are mixed up? The behavior of the lines is inconsistent with intuition and also with Fig. 9.

Larger particles - associated with lower AE - will have a more pronounced forward scattering peak, i.e. PF(AE=1.8) - PF(AE2.08) should be positive for a scattering angle of zero. However, this not the case in Figure 8. Similarly, PF(AE=2.3) – PF(AE2.08) should be negative for a scattering angle of zero.

In addition, the signs of the curves in Fig. 8 appear to be inconsistent with the differences between the curves in Fig. 9. In Figure 8 PF(AE=2.3) is smaller than PF(AE=2.08) for scattering angles between 60 and 90 deg, which would imply larger aerosol extinction for the AE=2.3 case (to produce the same limb radiance). However, this is not the case in Fig. 9.

These issues would disappear, if the two lines in Fig. 8 are mixed up or if the differences are actually determined the other way around (i.e., B – A instead if A – B). Perhaps I’m missing something?

Please also specify, what value is used as a reference value to determine the relative differences in Figure 8.

Caption Fig. 14, line 1: “675 nm (left)”

The panel says “508 nm”

Same caption, line 5: “508 nm and 675 nm” ?

Which wavelength is shown?

Best wishes,

Christian von Savigny

Dear Dr. Chen,

thank you for the latest revision of your manuscript. All open issues were now resolved and I'm happy to accept your paper for publication in AMT. I congratulate you and all your co-authors.

Best wishes,

Christian von Savigny