Dear Dr. Sagi,

I've now received two reviews of the revised version of your paper. One reviewer recommends accepting the paper as is, while the other requests some more (minor) improvements and clarifications. I ask you to consider the suggestions by reviewer #1 and modify the manuscript accordingly.

Looking forward to receiving a new version of your manuscript,

sincerely,

Christian v. Savigny (Assoc. editor of AMT)

Editor review of the 2nd revision of ACP manuscript acp-2014-45 by Sagi et al.

Dear Mr. Sagi,

Thank you for submitted a revised version of your manuscript. I read the revised version myself and found a number of inconsistencies that I ask you to address, before the manuscript can be accepted for publication in ACP.

Best wishes,

Christian v. Savigny (Assoc. editor of AMT)


Line 20: ‘of O3 has been removed from where the potential temperature is 600K’
This is a strange phrase. I suggest replacing it by ‘of O3 has been removed at the 600 K isentropic level’

Line 26: comma after ‘Therefore’ ?

Line 26: ‘Therefore, the periods during which the temperature inside the vortex goes below the threshold for PSC formation are highly infrequent’
I don’t agree with this statement, specifically with ‘highly infrequent’, which suggests that this essentially never happens. In fact, we do observe significant chemical ozone losses in nearly every second winter in the NH. They are not as strong as in the SH, admitted, but they do occur.

Line 30: ‘January(e.g.’ -> ‘January (e.g.’

Line 88: ‘SMILES observed’ and one line below ‘It vertically scans’
Tense not consistent

Line 92: ‘evolves over 24 h after 1 – 2 months’
This is a very imprecise statement. Can you provide a more accurate number, or is there a reasons for the large time range?

Line 96: ‘There are THREE instrumental configurations .. : TWO different observation .. and TWO different AOS units’
I find this sentence confusing, because I’d expect 4 instrumental configurations?

Line 125: ‘The ozone and N2O used in this study profiles’ -> ‘The ozone and N2O profiles used in this study’

Sentence before equation (1) and the following paragraph: ‘For a flow field (u,v,w) ..’
This suggests that u, v and w are the three wind components having all the same unit, i.e. m/s. Looking at equation (1) and also at equation (4), this cannot be the case. Please specify the units of w so that this paragraph is consistent.

Line 171: ‘where, T are the absolute temperatureS’ -> ‘where T IS the absolute temperature’

Line 183: ‘Assimilated fields at PT of 400 K and 1000 K have also been produced for the boundary layers for the analysis period.’
This sentence confuses me and I suggest deleting ‘for the boundary layers’, because this phrase seems to relate to boundary layers that were already mentioned earlier. This is, however, not the case, as far as I can tell.

Line 186: Comma after ‘Therefore’ ?

Line 191: ’40 days prediction’ -> ’40 day prediction’

Line 197: ‘The modified potential vorticity is referred to the potential temperature level of 475 K’
This sounds a little awkward. Suggest replacing by ‘The modified potential vorticity is show at the 475 K potential temperature level’ if that’s the intended meaning of the statement?

Line 205: ‘eg.’ -> ‘e.g.’

Line 228: ‘, there are exponential increases in $\sigma$ caused by’ -> ‘an exponential increase in $\sigma$ occurs caused by’

Line 236: ‘The SMILES ozone abundance, as expected due to known biases, was approximately 0.1 ppmv lower than SMR ..’
Well, looking at Figs. 7 and 8, there are many areas with significantly larger differences. How did you determine the value of 0.1 ppmv? The value seems to significantly underestimate the actual differences between SMR and SMILES.

Line 254: ‘while for SMILES the total error reflects the variation inside the vortex.’
Looking at Fig. 9 this statement only appears to be valid after DOY 45 or so, right? Perhaps I’m missing a point here?

Line 290: ‘. Khosrawi et al. (2011) .’ ??

Line 293: ‘Vortex average ClO in daytime and nighttime IS also presented ..’

Line 297: ‘Jan’ -> ‘January’

Line 302: ‘(-45 DOY)’ -> ’(45 DOY)’

Line 318: ‘Fig 12’ -> ‘Fig. 12’

Line 320: ‘agrees here with the model results’ -> ‘agrees with the results presented here’ ?

Line 356: ‘SMILES meaurements with data assimilation technique’ -> ‘SMILES measurements COMBINED with A data assimilation technique’

Line 372: ‘The accumulated ozone loss as of 31 March derived from SMILES was higher than that from SMR by ~ 5%’
What PT level are you talking about? Looking at Fig. 12, the relative differences are at most levels significantly larger than 5 %.

Regarding the NOx driven ozone loss near 600K: this is also discussed in Sonkaew et al. (2014).


Line 405: ‘doi:doi:’

Line 430: ‘K.-i.’ -> ‘K.-I.’ ?

Table 1, right column, lines 9 and 10: ‘0.875 sec’ and ‘3.5 sec’
It’s not clear what these times refer to, please clarify.

Caption Fig. 3, last line: ‘only measurements with measurement response BELOW THAN a threshold of 0.85 are considered’
I’m sure you mean ‘above a threshold of 0.85 ..’, right?

Fig. 5: the title of all 3 panels says ‘Error (SMR) at ‘, which is not what the panels show.

Fig. 6: the caption speaks of ‘yellow area’, but it appears green on my screen and also on my printout.

Fig. 11, caption line 1: ‘Vertical profiles of accumulated ozone loss as of 28 February 2010’
Please mention the reference date (start date) for the determination of the accumulated ozone loss.

Dear Dr. Sagi,

thanks for the revised version of the manuscript. Most points have been dealt with OK, but there are several points that were not changed, despite the fact that you listed in your reponse that you changed them.

This includes:

1. Line 290: ‘. Khosrawi et al. (2011) .’ ??
Your response:
>> This reference is related to the removed sentence. Because of latex compiling, we could not strike out any reference but this is removed in the latest revision.

However, it is not removed in the version you uploaded

2. Line 293: ‘Vortex average ClO in daytime and nighttime IS also presented ..’
Your response:
>> Fixed.

It is not fixed yet.

3. Line 297: ‘Jan’ -> ‘January’
Your response:
>> Fixed.

No, not fixed!

4. Table 1, right column, lines 9 and 10: ‘0.875 sec’ and ‘3.5 sec’
It’s not clear what these times refer to, please clarify.
Your response:
>> Fixed.

But it's not fixed!

5. Caption Fig. 3, last line: ‘only measurements with measurement response
BELOW THAN a threshold of 0.85 are considered’
I’m sure you mean ‘above a threshold of 0.85 ..’, right?

You changed this point, but the phrase is not fully correct:
'with measurement response above THAN a threshold of 0.85' should be 'with measurement response above a threshold of 0.85


Please go throught the list of corrections again carefully, correct the remaining points and upload a version of the manuscript WITHOUT ANY highlighted changes, i.e. no underlining, no text crossed out, etc.

Best wishes,

Christian v. Savigny (Assoc. editor of AMT)