I got one formal review and one informal review.

Both reviewers recommend acceptance, one asked for minor revisions:

The second reviewer wrote:



The authors have done a remarkable work addressing my questions and concerns. There are only a few lingering (minor) issues:

• Please, revise the writing style of the manuscript. There are several places in which the sentences lack style, i.e. they are grammatically correct but need to be reworded (e.g. first two sentences of section 4.6). I do acknowledge that the latest manuscript is in better shape, though.
• Regarding the parameterization to derive the new MODIS band 6 radiances. It says that the validity of the parameterization was tested with observations, but how are you going to test it if the actual MODIS band 6 is not functional. Did you use synthetic measurements to test the parameterization?
• Page 16, line 3: Rather tan citing Zhang and King, I would recommend to mention Liang et al. (2009) because, to the best of my knowledge, Liang et al is the first study that applies the heterogeneity index to MODIS reflectances. In addition inhomogeneities is also producing a spatial heterogeneity effect, which is unrelated to the 3D radiative effects.

Liang, L., L. Di Girolamo, and S. Platnick (2009), View-angle consistency in reflectance, optical thickness and spherical albedo of marine water-clouds over the northeastern Pacific through MISR-MODIS fusion, Geophys. Res. Lett., 36, L09811, doi:10.1029/2008GL037124.

• Figure 9: This is a nice figure. My only criticism is on the use of over/underestimation of tau and reff, as It is a little bit confusing. It sounds better for instance: “prescribed tau_liq is overestimated (underestimated).
• Table 4 is interesting. It is confusing the use of the eta letter. Just use r_e plus/minus sigma. I am not aware of many studies that show such a nice comparison between the three different MODIS r_eff and in-situ observations. Kokhanovsky et al. (2013) attempted to retrieve the cloud vertical structure of stratiform clouds with three MODIS channels, and then compare their results with in-situ observations. However, their attempt was applied to warm clouds only.
A. A. Kokhanovsky, D. Painemal and V. V. Rozanov, "The Intercomparison of Satellite-Derived and In Situ Profiles of Droplet Effective Radii in Marine Stratocumulus Clouds," in IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Letters, vol. 10, no. 5, pp. 1147-1151, Sept. 2013. doi: 10.1109/LGRS.2012.2233710



Based on the comments by the two (experienced) reviewers, this paper is accepted subject to the above recommended minor revisions.

The paper has been well revised taking all comments by the reviewers into account, as far as I could see. So it is acceptable. Still, I suggest a few minor editorial changes to the text. Please see my comments in the annotated pdf manuscript, attached.