The authors have addressed the comments from the reviewers. Before sending their final version of the paper to ACP, the authors should address the following comments:

P. 1
L. 42: Indicate acronym ppb.

P. 2
L. 14: Inconsistent spelling of “modelled” – select UK or US spelling and stick to one of them. Check Sect. 4.

P. 4
L. 6-7: Avoid using different tenses. I think “were” in L. 7 should be “are”.
L. 29: Style point. I suggest you do not treat the models as sentient, and you write: “…all models used the same prior fluxes…”.

P. 5
L. 3: circa 10% of the loss? Please clarify.
L. 10: Do you need “suggested to be”?

P. 7
L. 8: I suggest here and elsewhere the construction “i.e.,”.
L. 9-10: Please introduce acronyms. Do this elsewhere, e.g, when using the acronym NOAA.
L. 16: Would “considered” be better than “requested”?
L: 27: Do you really mean reproducibility?
L. 29: Do you really mean repeability?

P. 8
L. 9: Data provided to the modellers or the models?

P. 9
L. 12: poleward.
L. 14: Earlier you use “Brewer-Dobson” – be consistent (later you also use Brewer Dobson).
L. 16: I presume you mean 19-eta layers. I suggest spelling this out.
L. 19: I think a more common term than upper and lower realms is the overworld/underworld of Hoskins (1991) – which you introduce later. Please consider rewording.

P. 11
L. 19: I suggest “Equator”.
L. 34: I think it should be “latter”, as the two possibilities are not sequential in time.

P. 12
L. 16: Avoid the use of “&”.

P. 13
L. 13: Do you need “appears to dominate”? Would “dominates” be more appropriate?

P. 15
L. 17: Presumably 30deg in both hemispheres.
L. 33: Do you need “appears”? Would “which is satisfactorily” be sufficient?

P. 16
L. 7: Earlier you use “breakup” – be consistent.
L. 23: Do you need “actually”?

P. 20
L. 9: Nevison.
L. 33: Acknowledgments.

P. 28
Table 1: Specify if the horizontal resolution is longitude x latitude or the reverse.

P.30
Table 5: What do positive/negative offsets mean?

P. 31
Table 6: Are the Tropics really defined between 10S and 10N? You should indicate that the extra-tropics are for latitudes southward of 30S and northward of 30N.

P. 34
Fig. 2 caption: Please include information of what the limits of the colour scale (red/purple) indicate. Also do so for other figures.

P. 39
Fig. 7 caption: Specify that the model is indicated in the legend within the panel – the term “subplot” is confusing.

P. 40
Fig. 8 caption: The stations appear to go by row, not column. Please clarify (perhaps I have misunderstood).

P. 43
Fig. S1 caption: Specify that the model is indicated in the legend within each panel. Also identify the legend inside the panels in the caption for Fig, S4.

P. 45
Fig. S3 caption: The 2nd and 4th row panels differ from the 1st and 3rd row panels. Please explain the difference.

Hoskins, B. J. (1991), Towards a PV-theta view of the general circulation, Tellus 43AB, 27–35.