Overall, the response has been adequate. I have 2 requests before publishing. The first is that the paper be looked at carefully for grammar. The second is that the authors consider the following comments.


This sentence needs to be rewritten: page 2: line 28-30 "The tropical upwelling is anti-correlated with the tropical temperature above the tropopause and its strength determines stratospheric ozone and water vapor entry values by modulating TTL temperatures (Yulaeva et al., 1994; Randel et al., 2006; Flury et al., 2013)."
Note, modulating TTL temperatures doesn't determine stratospheric ozone. Rewrite to ensure that it is clear that advection of tropospheric ozone into the stratosphere is the important process for ozone.

Page 3: lines 0-6 (and a few lines at the end of page 2) I think the authors should also consider a recent paper by Chaim Garfinkel (that is not currently referenced...see https://www.atmos-chem-phys.net/18/4597/2018/acp-18-4597-2018.pdf). This considers the Nonlinear response of tropical lower-stratospheric temperature and water vapor to ENSO, and given the magnitude of the El Nino discussed, it may play a role in the water vapor response.

Also, Page 3, first paragraph of section 2. The authors should also acknowledge that the Avery paper and the Tweedy paper are really looking at different times. The Avery paper is concerned with the ENSO peak, which is before the QBO disruption.

On page 5 it states "In addition, the H2O anomaly time series is less affected by biases, which do not have ENSO or QBO signals." This needs a reference or a demonstration that it is true.

Page 6 states "Together, the most recent El Niño event and the QBO disruption are expected to impact the tropical upwelling, via wave–mean flow interaction (Holton, 1979; Dunkerton, 1980; Grimshaw, 1984) and control of the cold point temperatures (Kim and Son, 2012; Kim and Alexander, 2015), therefore affecting the transport and distribution of 15 stratospheric trace gases (Avery et al., 2017; Tweedy et al., 2017)" You need to acknowledge that the peak of the two events (El Nino and QBO disruption) are at different times, so although they both impact tropical upwelling, they don't do it simultaneously.)

Discussion: first sentence (line 10 page 9) doesn't make sense "Two previous studies (i.e. Avery et al. (2017) and Tweedy et al. (2017)) focussing on ENSO and QBO, respectively, led to puzzling H2O anomalies in 2015–2016." The studies did not lead to anomalies.

The next sentence, does not correctly represent the Avery study, which did not discuss the qbo disruption and is mainly discussing the Dec 2015 extremely high water and attributing that to ice input. The Tweedy paper is only concerned with the qbo disruption that is in 2016, when the ONI was decreasing.

Thanks for making those small edits. Looks good now.