This manuscript provides a comprehensive overview of the validation of OMPS LP v2.6 ozone profiles, discussing biases with comparative observations and the long-term stability of the SNPP dataset. This work is an extension and integration of the Kramarova et al. 2024 study, which presented the OMPS LP v2.6 retrieval. The paper is well-written and well-structured, presenting the results of the validation in a clear way. Particularly interesting is the focus provided in several parts of the paper on finding a valuable set of correlative data to be used for validation, in a future with fewer limb observations available.

I have a few minor comments to the manuscript, which are listed below and a few technical corrections.

• The methodology used to compare OMPS LP with ozonesonde is unclear. It seems that you haven’t used averaging kernels to match the vertical resolution of the two profiles (as done with OMPS NP), is this right? In that case how have you performed the interpolation/smoothing of the sonde profiles? Some more details in this regard are needed.
• I would also suggest to include a couple of more references in the introduction, as only the WMO assessment (2022) is used. For example, other comprehensive studies on stratospheric trends and uncertainties are the LOTUS assessment in 2019 and Godin-Beekmann et al. 2022. A recent study involving observations and models on lower stratospheric trends is the paper by Benito‐Barca et al. 2025. 
• Section 2 focuses briefly on the instrument and on the retrieval, introducing the two versions v2.5 and 2.5. For this reason, I would add “and retrieval description” to the title of the section. It is also not clear from the first paragraph that you are going to use only SNPP in this paper. In the second paragraph, would it be possible to distinguish between the improvements in L1 data and the changes in the retrieval settings between v2.5 and v2.6?
• The authors provide an insight into the approaching future, with MLS and SAGE III retiring soon. At the same time, new OMPS instruments are going to be launched. In this perspective, an overview of other instruments that are going to be designed or launched in the next years would be interesting. For example, you could mention the upcoming ALTIUS mission in the introduction or in the conclusions: for this mission, OMPS will serve as a reference, making it even more important to characterize its long-term stability and biases.
• Since you mentioned in Sect. 5.1 a comparison of the correlation results with v2.5, you could also provide a short comparison between the biases found in version v2.5 w.r.t. v2.6. I am also wondering what is the difference between panel (c) of Fig. 4 to panel (a) of Kramarova 2024. Is it only the considered period? The biases appear smaller and more negative in this manuscript. To help visualize the biases, I suggest reducing the color bar extension for the first three panels of Fig. 4, e.g. to ±30%.
• Can you shortly clarify the drift computation methodology? Are you computing differences for each collocation OMPS to correlative profiles, then averaging these differences on a monthly basis, removing the seasonal cycle and finally computing the linear trend? Regarding the drift, I think it would be valuable information to include an estimation of the threshold needed to confidently detect trends in the stratosphere over the last two decades, as they are often on the order of 1-2 % per decade.
• For the comparison in polar regions, can you mention if you used a filter for polar mesospheric clouds? Have you considered any restrictions related to potential vorticity to exclude cases with collocations within/outside the polar vortex?

Technical corrections

L20: I would remove “the” from “the retrieval algorithm”.

L30: Also here I would remove “the” from “the OMPS LP”.

L41-43: possible re-formulation of the sentence: “These increases are consistent with model simulation showing that they arise from a combination of ozone-depleting substances concentrations and decreasing upper-stratospheric temperatures, driven by increasing CO2”.

L48: “and so trends have large uncertainties” → “leading to large uncertainties in trends”.

L61: I would remove “when validating such data”

L85: “which is more pronounced” → ”which was more pronounced”.

L101: Possibly mention also that the altitude range over which ozonesondes can be used for validation is limited to about 30 km.

L112: Is the period until April 2024 or June? For lidar December 2024 is mentioned.

L130: “with which to compare with” → “to use for the comparison with”

L152: Since the v6 became recently available and you also mention it, I would avoid saying “the latest version”.

L175-177: I find the two sentences in these two lines very similar: isn’t the accuracy estimated by the comparison with other data sets?

L216: It is Fig. 4 not 1.

L257: The sentence is not very clear to me. Could it be that the variability of OMPS retrievals at the ozone peak is lower than for the other datasets?

L338: I think you mean between 20 and 30 km.

L379: I would add “above 20 km” at the end of the sentence.

L425: Maybe repeat the word between to make it less confusing: “and between OMPS LP and ozonesondes”.

L484: Typo in OMPS NP.

L615: Remove , after “consistent”.

References

Benito‐Barca, Samuel, et al. "Recent lower stratospheric ozone trends in CCMI‐2022 models: Role of natural variability and transport."Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres 130.9 (2025): e2024JD042412.

Godin-Beekmann, Sophie, et al. "Updated trends of the stratospheric ozone vertical distribution in the 60° S–60° N latitude range based on the LOTUS regression model." Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics Discussions 2022 (2022): 1-28.

Petropavlovskikh, Irina, et al. "SPARC/IO3C/GAW report on Long-term Ozone Trends and Uncertainties in the Stratosphere." 26 Feb. 2019.

The manuscript provides a validation of the SNPP OMPS-LP v2.6 ozone dataset.  Validation is done primarily with comparisons to MLS/ACE/SAGE III/ISS, but also other data sources like ozonesondes, lidar, and OMPS-NP.  It is an important paper to be in the literature since OMPS-LP is poised to become the backbone of vertically resolved global ozone measurements in the near future.  Overall the flow is easy to follow, presents useful information, and should be published subject to some revisions.  My main suggestion is that the information could be summarized better for data users, specifically the estimated drift levels for the dataset.

General Comments

The choice to not degrade SAGE III/ISS to a similar resolution I don't think has a justification other than convenience.  While it doesn't change any of the main conclusions of the paper in my opinion, various statements in the discussion are likely because of this choice.  For example, the significantly degraded correlation with SAGE at high altitudes, or some of the increased oscillations noted in the drift analysis.  I would suggest the SAGE III/ISS data be smoothed to approximately the same resolution as OMPS-LP and the analysis repeated.

The paper is long, I don't believe it is too long, but there is a lot of information.  What might be useful is to provide a summary table (something akin to the MLS data quality document tables) of observed drifts/estimated accuracy for the v2.6 data products based on the analysis done here to better provide easy to digest recommendations to users of the data.

I find the stability discussion not to be wrong, but maybe is too optimistic in some places. Specifically the statement "We therefore conclude that there is no significant systematic drift in OMPS LP version 2.6 ozone for the period 2012 to 2024 and that it is suitable for use in ozone trend studies." which may not technically be incorrect, but the numbers presented are 2%/decade from 20-50 km and becoming larger outside.  Statements like "We find small drifts ... of less than 2%/decade ..." may not that be useful to potential users of the data trying to attribute changes of 1%/decade, which is the level that most trend studies would be looking at.  I think this is solved if a summary table is included with estimated drift levels so the user can decide if it is useful for their application, as well as maybe a softening of the blanket statement that the dataset is suitable for ozone trend studies.

Specific Comments

l. 98. There should be a more detailed explanation of how this study differs from the v2.6 validation already done by Kramarova et al. (2024)

l. 102.  The motivation/wording here seems like a repeat of what is at the start of Sec. 6, and the Sec. 6 wording does a better job of motivating how OMPS-LP could be validated going forward. On the same topic,  I know it is outside the scope of the paper, but there is no mention anywhere (that I could find) of the potential of validating/cross-calibrating OMPS-LP based on the overlap between NPP and N21 or future satellites.

l. 112. Here the evaluation period is stated as ending June 2024, but earlier it was April 2024?

l. 130.  At this point the co-location criteria has not been stated, but there are figures showing coincidences which is slightly confusing.

l. 150. I believe SAGE III/ISS does extend to +/- 70 degrees latitude? albeit for a very limited time of the year

l. 180. I know in previous studies since Aura and NPP are in similar orbits you can get almost perfect coincidences between MLS and OMPS-LP.  Is that is what is done here? Or is the same criteria applied to MLS?

l. 184. "The only time criterion is that the profiles be on the same day..."  is this actually what is done or is it a +/- 12 hour window around the observation time? 

l. 186. "... do not account for the small differences in the vertical resolution..." this is true for MLS and ACE, but the SAGE vertical resolution is significantly better than OMPS-LP

l. 203. "To the 1:30 pm local solar time ..." the measurement time is only 1:30 pm at the equator, presumably you mean to the actual measurement time of OMPS-LP?

l. 206. When I read this paragraph I thought it meant that we would only be seeing results from the wide latitude bands, but that is not the case.  I would reword it or move it after the 5 degree zonal means comparisons are done

Sec 5.1: I find the systematic difference between MLS and SAGE interesting here, specifically in Figure 4 you could interpret it as MLS being ~5% higher than SAGE almost everywhere.  This is quite different than say what is reported in the Wang et al. validation of SAGE.  I know it's different data versions etc, and doesn't have anything to do with OMPS-LP, but I'm wondering if you noticed this and is it expected.

Fig. 4: I find it hard to quantify the differences from the color plots since the scale is so large.  Perhaps some black contour lines could be added to the for example +/- 10% difference levels to guide the reader?

l. 237.  Does the altitude biases correlate with the changing wavelengths used in the retrieval in altitude?

l. 250. "degraded precision and increased noise for SAGE III/ISS measurements...": yes, but a lot of this is probably because of using the raw 0.5 km SAGE measurements instead of degrading it down to the resolution of the other measurements

Fig. 5: Is there some motivation for the line at 0.75? 

l. 307. "However, these biases are not seen when compared to MLS." is a possible explanation uncertainties in the diurnal scaling?

Figure 8: The scales here are really quite large, here we are extending to +/- 20%/decade, when observable ozone trends are ~1%/decade

l. 497.  Here the drift is calculated until the end of 2021 at low altitudes, presumably because of the Hunga influence.  But this wasn't done in comparisons with the other instruments, so it is an issue with OMPS NP? It seems odd.

l. 522. "Previously, we limited our comparisons geographically to exclude polar regions" I think some of the comparisons with MLS previously did extend to 80?

Figure 12.  It is odd here to use two significantly different scales, 10% for the NP comparisons and 50% for the MLS comparisons.  Also error bars are only shown for the NP comparisons?

Figure 13. Here we are also back to using the full time period with NP drift calculations instead of just to 2021

Sec 8. This section is quite short, and all of the information is in the other sections in some shape or form. I would ask the authors to consider if it could be removed.  

Technical Corrections

l. 484. "OMP SNP" -> "OMPS NP"