The manuscript presents and discusses an algorithm that is used to analyze aerosol-related observations with ESA’s spaceborne wind Doppler lidar AEOLUS. The unique methodology is  originally designed to analyze EarthCARE space lidar observations (feature mask algorithm, aerosol profile algorithm).

The respective AEOLUS aerosol products are compared with observations performed with NASA’s CALIPSO space lidar.

I clearly recommend publication.

I have only minor points

P5, L149: in Eq.3 we have … Ra … then in L150 we have … R_a …. please harmonize!

P5, L156: In Eq.4   we have Ra_a,1 and so on. All this is a bit confusing!

P7, L197: To my opinion, a discussion of the findings in Figures 4 and 5 is missing! Please, explain the observed features, at least a bit! The paper should not only focus on technical and data analysis points.

For example, the feature in Figure 4 (0-12.5km, and 15-20.0km , -63.2N, 228.3E, winter, July 2019) is interesting, I mean this column-like red/yellow feature? What is it? Smoke? Volcanic aerosol at 15-17.5 km height? The lidar ratio seems to be around 50 sr at 355 nm. So that could have been smoke! The particles were probably spherical so that AEOLUS data can provide reliable lidar ratios.

The lidar ratios in Figure 4 are often in yellow (around 100sr). Is that always related to dust and cirrus features, and therefore related to the fact that the cross-polarized signal component is missing in the case of the AEOLUS observations?

In Figure 5, there is layer from 7.5-11 km height over North/Eastern Siberia on the way to Alaska. Is that a smoke layer? Please explain and discuss. In Figure 4 (on the right and left sides of panels), there are large areas with reasonable lidar ratios around 50 sr, all over Siberia (from the ground up to the tropopause, 40N-85N, 42E-210E). Is that related to the strong Siberian fires in the summer of 2019? The smoke particles were probably spherical and the cross-polarized signal component zero…, that may explain the reasonable lidar ratios (see the MOSAiC paper of Ohneiser, ACP, 2021).

P7,  section 3.1: I would mention more often that the wavelength is 355 nm.

Be clear: The CALIPSO extinction profiles are computed (estimated) from the retrieved backscatter profiles. CALIPSO cannot measure extinction profiles.

An Angstroem exponent of 0.55 is almost too high for dust, may be useful for marine aerosol,  but is clearly too low for other aerosols (urban haze, smoke). However, you used 0.55 for all observations, right?

I am missing a bit a discussion on the uncertainty in the CALIPSO products caused by the Angstroem exponent assumption (0.55).

P10, Sect 4.1.2:

P10, L290: When comparing CALIPSO and AEOLUS observations please clearly state  the wavelengths of comparison. It is always 355 nm, but the reader may not remember  the content of section 3.1. One could provide such information in the figure captions.

Are the AEOLUS signals stronger than CALIPSO signals because the AEOLUS wavelength is 355 nm and the CALIPSO wavelength is 532 nm?

P12, L357: Monthly mean extinction coefficient… for the PBL? or for the entire troposphere?

Check and update the literature (preprint status may have changed).

Figure 7 and 8, the text on top of the panels is too small. Mention wavelength in the caption.

Figure 9: Mention the wavelength in the figure caption.

Figure 10: so many lidar ratios in yellow. Is the reason discussed  in the main text body? Is that related to dust and cirrus?

Figure 11: the lidar ratio distribution belongs to what height range? .

Figure 12: Mention the wavelength in the figure caption.

Figure 13: What is the message of the correlation? What is the impact of the assumed Angstroem exponent of 0.55?

Figure 14: The extinction values from 5-15 km are confusing. The tropopause for latitudes from 0-30N is probably around 15-17 km height. So, probably only tropospheric extinction profiles are shown? Why is the agreement of the different extinction profiles so bad for heights >5km? The background extinction coefficients in the clean upper troposphere (and lower stratosphere) should be around 0.75-1 Mm-1 at 355 nm and about 0.25-0.5 Mm-1 at 532 nm. Is again an Angstroem exponent of 0.55 used in the conversion of the CALIPSO data?

Figures 15 and 16. Do we need these figures?

Review report egusphere-2024-731

The authors present an assessment study of the Aeolus’ feature mask and vertical extinction profiles versus CALIPSO data. Aeolus products have been obtained via the implementation of the AEL-FM and AEL-PRO retrieval algorithms adapted from the A-FM and A-PRO algorithms, which have been developed for the EarthCARE HSRL ATLID. The analysis focuses on dust-rich scenes probed by the two spaceborne instruments across N. Africa in October 2018 and May 2019. The study is well-organized, and all the essential details are well presented and discussed. Therefore, I recommend that the manuscript be published after addressing the minor comments provided below.

1. Lines 64-65: To what extent your results will be affected by the consideration of L1B data generated with the most recent Baseline version (i.e., Baseline 16)?
2. Lines 91-92: Is there any threshold on the number of counts?
3. Line 177: Which is the source of the a priori lidar ratios and the particle effective area radii?
4. Lines 179-181: Can you please explain better this sentence? What do you mean “… otherwise the lidar-ratio supplied by the classification procedure is used.”?
5. Lines 234-236: In my opinion it would be quite interesting to show this comparison and briefly discuss the obtained outcomes. It is well known that when non-spherical particles (e.g., dust) are probed by ALADIN it is expected a “weak” performance in terms of reproducing the backscatter coefficient (for reasons already stated in the manuscript). Taking into account that there is a sufficient volume of Aeolus-CALIPSO collocated data, a better assessment can be given than those in Abril-Gago et al. (2022) and Gkikas et al. (2023), who presented single (few) dust cases.  
6. Line 286: I would suggest to remove this sentence since CALIPSO assigns a lidar ratio for each aerosol type.  
7. Lines 294-300: I am confused with this part of the text. Why are you considering all aerosol subtypes across the scene in order to reproduce the frequency histogram of S values? Do you think that it would be better to reproduce the histograms for specific aerosol types (dust and smoke for this case)? I think that the dust lidar ratio given by Song et al. (2023) are substantially higher than those provided in the DeLiAn database (Floutsi et al., 2023).
8. Line 304: What do you mean with the term “error” for the CALIPSO extinction coefficients?
9. Section 4.2: Do you see any noticeable differences between daytime and nighttime conditions?
10. Section 4.1: Are you taking into account all the CALIPSO retrievals or are you processing only those tagged as “dust” in the classification scheme?   
11. Lines 335-336: How much your results would be affected in the case of using more realistic aerosol speciated lidar ratios (see DeLiAn)?

Lines 364-365: It would be nice to provide further explanation regarding this assertion, highlighting the necessity of the deployment of a cross-polar channel on the Aeolus-2 satellite mission.