Dear authors,
please revise the paper according to the reviewer's remarks. In particular, please

- shorten and make the manuscript more concise to clearly point out, but without redundancy, the relevant findings and conclusions, and
- clarify how exactly the overlap parameterisation should look like to be implemented in climate models.

Please do also try and improve the language. Remaining copyediting can then also be done by ACP.

Best regards,
Johannes

Dear authors,
please consider the following issues:

l31: drop “preliminary”
l36 and l38: replace standard deviation by another metric (mean absolute deviation positive/negative?) - since mean – 1 std dev is smaller than zero, impossible
l40: specify with regard to what the 41% are considered
l43: specify what the “entire multilayered cloud system” is
l49: this is probably 40° N?

l66: re-formulate “particularly significant” to more precisely say what is meant.
l99: Also clarify the limits of ground-based radar.
l103: “frequencies, respectively” since observers often dont see high, satellites not low clouds.
l104: why retrievals and radiative effects?
l105: should this read: single-layered?
l141: comma rather than slash between cirrus and cirrostratus
l167: In my browser, the link does not work. Please correct.
l266: More generally, it is the large-scale circulation that matters.
l287: “near 30$^\circ$” a space is missing
l295: “may even” please specify “over ocean”
l297: “under large-scale subsidence regions”: where does this information stem from? it is not obvious from Table 1.
l369: “cloud radiative effect”: The spectral range needs to be specified (solar? terrestrial? net?)
l370: “during daytime”: how is this averaged? Or is it instantaneous at overpass time? Specification needed.
l392: atmospheric heating of up to 3 Wm-2: from the numbers in l407 it seems 3 Wm-2 is rather the average effect, and Fig. 7 shows very large differences between toa and sfc. What is the actual range?
l396: “on a global scale”: these are, however, in-cloud values, aren't they? Needs explanation.
l421: A brief discussion would be useful on the scale-dependency of the overlap parameter (linking back to chapter 3.3) and then a clarification at which scale this analysis is performed.
l454: tend to be
l470: “rather than”: this sentence is difficult to understand and needs reformulation
l475: considered better on which basis?
l487: why “approximately”?
l590: A discussion would be useful on how the result, that minimum overlap tends to be a decent approximation in not few cases, might depend on observation limitations. Truely minimum overlap is what ISCCP or another passive sensor would observe. Why do the active sensors also tend into this direction?
l603: “more likely” than what?
l609: radiative contributions: the radiative effect numbers are in-cloud?
l1061 (Caption Fig. 5): please specify how the weighting is done, and whether it is in the solar or terrestrial spectrum, or net, and whether “during daytime” is averaged over a certain period (length of day?).
l1120: specify “relative difference”, probably “relative difference between real and random overlap”


Best regards,
Johannes