Dear Tomi

I have received responses from the referees about your revised manuscript. They suggest accept subject to minor revisions. Please answer the questions as listed below. After having received your revised manuscript I will decide on acceptance without further consultation of the referees.

Best regards

Andreas


The concerns of the referees are as follows:

Referee #1:

The paper has been largely improved but these points are still not resolved. It may be published after these are considered.

1. You have done the back trajectory analysis however have not found anything interesting, which means the sources are more local or basically very mixed? Could we get a general idea how much BC could be from biomass burning or traffic? I can marginally see the phase transition from the shift of BC features, is it at least associated with air mass coming from easterly or westerly?

2. Is the very large BC maybe because of the dust? The GMD for Gual looks too large to me.

3. It is better to use image plot for Fig. 7. and with colour scaled legend. It looks the bottom panel also has the second mode just been hidden by the other too populated mode.

4. Regarding the optical/mobility diameter of BC and BC core, could we have more details about Dm vs Do. The Dc/Dm tells the mixing state and Dm/Do tells the morphology.

5. The bottom line of this paper is still not very conclusive, for example, you could have answered the questions: why distinct features of BC from two places, in terms of BC mixing state, size, and morphology. It’s not really getting the punching point yet.


Referee #2:

The authors have addressed most of the reviewer comments adequately, and the organization and presentation of the results is much clearer in the revised version. I would feel more confident in recommending publication if the authors were able to find the causes of several somewhat odd features of the data, such as the SP2 over counting and the temperature dependences. They are, however, quite transparent in the treatment of these issues, and the rarity of data in this region coupled with the interesting DMA -> SP2 are both strengths.

Dear Tomi,

it's my pleasure to accept your revised manuscript for publication without further changes. Thank you for considering the reviewers concerns on the revised manuscript.

Best regards

Andeas