Dear Authors

Thank you for providing the revised manuscript “nvestigating the Frequency and Inter-Annual Variability in Global Above-Cloud Aerosol Characteristics with CALIOP and OMI” as well as your responses to the issues raised during the reviews.

Based on the reviewer’s comments and my own assessment I have concluded to reconsider your manuscript for publication in Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics after minor revisions.

Most of the reviewer’s comments have been resolved in your response; however, I would kindly ask you to address some outstanding issues, as requested in the attached review.

I am looking forward to your revised manuscript.

Kind regards,

Philip Stier

Co-Editor
Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics

Dear Authors

Subject: Editor Decision

Thank you for providing the revised manuscript “Investigating the Frequency and Inter-Annual Variability in Global Above-Cloud Aerosol Characteristics with CALIOP and OMI” as well as your responses to the issues raised in the reviews.
Your responses and the revised manuscript have addressed all outstanding issues and I am pleased to accept this manuscript for publication in ACP, subject to technical corrections.

Required technical technical corrections: the overall quality of the figures is not sufficient for publication. Specifically:

1) The figures are provided as raster images so that used fonts appear pixelated. Please provide vector formats for the publication process.

2) The labelling overlaying part of the images is often not legible. It is generally preferred to use black fonts over white parts of figure panels only.

3) Colour bars, legends and figures often overlap. Please provide figure panels with a clear consistent spacing.

Please liaise with the ACP production team to satisfy all technical requirements.

Thank you very much for choosing ACP!

Kind regards,

Philip Stier
Co-Editor
Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics

Dear Authors

Thank you for providing the revised and much improved figures. I just noticed two more issues that need to be addressed:

Figure 8+9: high latitude cloudy sky frequencies switch suddenly from high (red) to blue, which should indicate low frequencies. However, this is presumably just due to non-availability of data? This must be plotted as missing (e.g. white) values and not as blue, which would indicate low frequencies (in all figures that this applies to).

Figure 14: correct spelling of "unfiletered"

Kind regards,
Philip Stier

Dear Authors

Thank you very much for making these final corrections. I have now accepted the manuscript for publication.

Best regards
Philip Stier