Both referees reports for the original version of this paper were positive -- one was 'accept after technical corrections' and the other was 'accept after minor revision'. The revision has responded thoroughly to the referees' comments. and the revised paper is improved significantly as a result. I don't see any need to return the revised paper to the referees for further comment.

The only significant point raised by a referee that has not been acted on is that of whether 'programmatic' material should be included in an ACP paper. Whilst inclusion of this type of material might not fit a traditional standard scientific paper, I don't think that one should be too dogmatic about this. The important question is whether inclusion of this material is potentially valuable to the readership over some decent time scale (e.g. it won't seem out-of-date in a year's time). So generally I think it is fine to retain this material.

However thinking about this when looking through the revised paper made me think of the following points: (i) the SRIP report is referred to several times as if it exists already, e.g. in Section 1 you have 'The S-RIP report consists of two parts.' (which replaces text including 'the planned S-RIP report'). (ii) There is a bit of a confusion between 'project' and 'report' -- e.g. 'The S-RIP project focuses predominantly on reanalyses, although some chapters include diagnostics from operational analyses when appropriate.’ -- perhaps that should be 'some chapters of the planned report'. and (iii) the paper is described as 'an overview paper for the S-RIP special issue' -- but what that means is not that it is an 'overview of the special issue' but that it is an 'overview of the S-RIP project to be included in the special issue'.

All the above are fairly simple (perhaps trivial) points, but getting them (and more broadly the distinction between 'project', 'report' and 'special issue') absolutely transparent and clear would avoid reader confusion. It might be helpful to include somewhere a suitable paraphrase of the special issue details -- 'This special issue serves to collect research with relevance to S-RIP in preparation for the publication of the S-RIP report in 2018.'.

A final point is that given the reference to the future S-RIP report (which I think is useful) and your statement that both interim and final reports will be available in the SPARC report series, it might be helpful to say explicitly that these reports are available on the SPARC website and to give at least the address of the SPARC website as a whole.

Subject to consideration of the above I am pleased to accept the paper for publication in ACP. I've specified this as a further minor revision in case any dialogue between us is helpful -- but I expect to accept as is the next version of the paper.