Dear Authors,

I have received a formal review from one of the three original reviewers who supports publication. After my review and discussion off-line with the other two reviewers, a few items require your consideration prior to publication. Please try to address these in the best way possible:

1) In abstract “to the present” assumes what? You probably should pick an end date.
2) Figure 6 caption does not match figure.
3) There are some blank spots (assume no data for entire year?) in Figure 5.
4) Maybe skip most of the discussion about Gaussian distributions (page 6) and go straight to use of lognormals to model. Most people believe that AOD distributions are close to lognormal, and unlike MODIS, MISR isn’t crazy enough to retrieve negative AOD values.
5) One of the three reviewers asked about more details about the chemical processes implemented in the model, but they are not convinced clear answers were provided but rather references are only provided. Can you address this issue to satisfy this concern?
6) One of the three reviewers noted that the answer concerning the added value of this study for improving the model is not sufficient. Comparisons focused on AOD only are not enough to constrain and improve emissions, transport and deposition processes, which required aditionnal dedicated observations. Can you comment about this issue and if anything else can be put forward in the draft to satisfy this concern?
7) One of the three reviewers is concerned that the model used is too simple, in terms of aerosol-chemistry, to perform rigourous comparisons with MISR retrievals, especially for polluted regions. Can you address this concern in the draft somehow?