Dear Argyro, dear Albert,

It is my pleasure to accept your paper for publication in ACP based on the answers you provided to the comments of the two reviewers.

Please consider the technical points given below before uploading your final manuscript.

With best regards,
Matthias


You use very long and complex sentences in your revised manuscript. While I am very familiar with the topic addressed in your study, I had difficulties following some of these statements. I suggest that you simplify these parts of the text to make the paper more accessible to the general audience of ACP. It is mostly sufficient to just split a sentence in two or three shorter ones.

Here are some minor corrections that might clarify the message of your paper:
page 2, right column, line 1: Any fine-mode (?) aerosol contribution...
page 2, right column, third paragraph: The Limassol lidar station at the island of Cyprus in the eastern Mediterranean Sea is unique because it is the only site of the European Aerosol Research Lidar Network (EARLINET) which is influenced by a statistically significant number dust outbreaks from both the Middle East (5-7 per year) and the Sahara (> 10 per year).
page 3, left column, line 2: We compare a sub-set of lidar ratio observations...
page 3, right column, third paragraph: During the yearly CIMEL calibration period and/or in case of technical problems, we performed measurements with a MICROTOPS II sun photometer (solar light Company, USA) to obtain aerosol optical properties at 440, 500, 675, 870, and 936 nm. To assure high accuracy the sun photometer was mounted on a tripod. ... I suggest dropping "hand-held" (later in the text) as the instrument was mounted on a tripod.
point 1.: Has FT been introduced in the text?
point 3.: Observations with passive satellite sensors and estimated PBL heights over the potential source regions were also taken...
point 4.: drop likewise in last sentence
point 7.: ... depolarization ratios ranging from 0.05 to 0.31.
point 8.: drop "even" in the reference to satellite imagery
page 5, right column, line 9: for both --> resulting from both
page 5, right column, third paragraph: in-depth proof --> in-depth evaluation
page 6, right column, third paragraph: comparably long travel distance
page 9, left column, third paragraph: The measurement of the particle depolarization ratio is demanding... I think "is crucial" or "is of crucial importance" is more suitable