Addendum on ACP acceptance:

Thank you for addressing reviewers' comments and for making the requested clarifications.

If possible, please submit an improved version of Figures 1,3,6,11 for final publication in ACP. General advice: (i) avoid lossy compression (e.g., jpeg), (ii) use scalable fonts, (iii) select "high quality print" for creation of the pdf. Most of the problem in these figures probably stems from (i), which causes undesirable "Gibbs fringes" around sharp edges.

Regarding your reply comment "Thus we think that one possible explanation could be that the strong convection locally moves the tropopause upward..." I wish to clarify that the tropical cyclone is a meso-beta phenomenon (20-200 km) and so is the corresponding uplift of the tropopause. It is not a case of isolated convection at meso-gamma (2-20 km) causing a little bubble of tropospheric air to be trapped temporarily below an elevated tropopause.

It would be interesting, indeed, to colocate RO profiles with satellite-derived maps of total ozone (or UT/LS ozone, if available) to confirm the system-scale uplift and its effect on the thermal structure. Perhaps a quick literature review is warranted also, should you wish to pursue this avenue of research in future study. As it turns out, this topic is actually more important than we think: some have suggested that climate change portends changes in hurricane intensity owing to temperature trends near the tropopause.

--Tim Dunkerton
(tim@nwra.com)