Dear Authors,

subject to a few technical corrections given below, I am happy to accept your manuscript entitled
"Evidence for a continuous decline in lower stratospheric ozone offsetting ozone layer recovery"
for publication in Atmospheric chemistry and Physics.
Myself and one of the referees have suggested to mark the final paper as a highlight article.

Best regards,
Marc von Hobe

Requested technical corrections:
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If I understand correctly that Figures A1 to A13 are meant to be supplementary for readers interested to see some more background information and supportive evidence, then i) place these Figures in an extra "Supplementary Material" (see author guidelines for instructions) and ii) make sure to include appropriate referencing (e.g. "additional data/evidence is given in Fig. AX in the supplementary material") in the text. Currently, all Figures are references a normal Figures. If that is your intention, then please number them in order of reference from 1 to 18 and not use the A-numbering. Also, please make sure that all figures (manuscript and supplement) are referred to in the text.

Please avoid double parentheses with referencing (e.g. lines 392, 394, 400, 435). Use commas or semi-colons inside the parentheses instead.

Lines 135 - 139: adding the word "Pinatubo" might make this explanation more immediately accessible. I suggest: "We remove the two year period following the Pinatubo eruption, i.e. June 1991 to May 1993, from the analysis to avoid..."

Line 141: this sentence does not seem to be correct. How about: "We do not apply any statistical tests and therefore avoid making assumptions..." ?

Line 181: the "below 22 hPa" is ambiguous when using pressure as an altitude coordinate. An easy way to correct would be "...below 25 km (22 hPa)".

Line 252: should be "increase" (remove the s)