Dear Alexei,

Thank you for the revised paper and for addressing reviewer comments. Copernicus has the following policy which should have been sent to you in an email:

We kindly ask you to provide a detailed point-by-point response to all referee comments and specify all changes in the revised manuscript. The response to the Referees shall be structured in a clear and easy to follow sequence: (1) comments from Referees, (2) author's response, (3) author's changes in manuscript. In addition, please provide a marked-up manuscript version showing the changes made (using track changes in Word or latexdiff in LaTeX). This version should be combined with your response file so that the Editor can clearly identify what changes have been made.

The current response document does not spell out the changes in the manuscript, only pointing to the manuscript. It will be easier for the reviewers (and editor) to evaluate the revised document with everything in one place.

Best regards,

Tim

Dear Alexei,

I am pleased to accept your manuscript for publication in ACP subject to the following minor changes suggested by one of the reviewers. I am sorry the review process was slower than usual.

Best regards,

Tim

I have read the revised version of part 1 and in general I think it is much improved now. The logical structure of introduction is good, the equations are corrected, and the connections between part 1 and parts 2 and 3 are clearer now (e.g, discussion on page 12).

I have just a few additional comments for consideration:
1. page 3, Line 70: Beals et al 2015 not 2016
2. page 10: N0 in Equation 16a and 17a should be N1
3. page 12, Line 318: Pinsky et al. 2015 a b should be 2016. or change others back to 2015 in the paper (for example, page 4, Line 110). Check references page 29... same authors, title, different years.
4. page 16, Line 431: add "homogeneous" between "progressive" and "mixing"
5. Figure 10 is confusing. The description of figure 10 (page 16, Line 438-448) is correct, but not consistent with Figure 8. Figure 10 discusses the mixing between two mixed parcels, for example, A mixed with C. However, Figure 8 illustrates the mixing between an undiluted cloud parcel with a mixed parcel, which in the figure should be O mixed with A or C. Please clarify the progressive mixing in the paper. Does it consider the mixing between mixed parcels? Or does it only consider mixing between mixed parcel and original cloud parcel.
6. page 17, Line 464: add "extreme" before "inhomogeneous mixing"
7. page 17, Line 473: is it because always mixing with original cloud parcel? This is related to comment 5. I still find this confusing.
8. Figure 5, what are q and T when changing RH (a,b,c), what are RH2 and T when changing q1 (d,e,f), and what are q1 and RH2 when changing T (g,h,j)?