1. There is a sentence in the abstract that is difficult to parse: "A detailed analysis of the heating rates shows that the absorbing aerosols are 90 % responsible for warming the ambient air where they reside, with approximately +5.7
K/day, while the accompanying water vapour above clouds has a longwave effect of +4.7 K/day (equivalent to 7% decrease) on the cloud-top cooling." There is no altitude provided, and I have trouble reconciling the positive longwave effect with the 7% decrease - in what? - followed by a reference to cloud-top cooling. Are the parentheses misplaced? Since this sentence is in the abstract, I would suggest revisiting it to clarify further for the reader what they should take away from it.
2. At the top of p.12, the last sentence in the top paragraph mentions that fuel moisture can make a significant contribution to the humidity within an aerosol plume. A back-of-the-envelope calculation based on Parmar et al., 2008, will contradict this assessment. I encourage the authors to explore this, as this has ramifications for the modeling of the moisture transport.
3. Are there any systematic changes in some of your findings, Fig 10 and Fig. 11 in particular, as a function of month (JJA)? Fig. 6 shows that there is a seasonal change happening in the winds during these months, consistent with a strengthening of the temperature gradient between southern Africa and the Congo region (e.g., Adebiyi and Zuidema, 2016). One might or might not expect other relationships to also change and it could inform the LWP-qv discussion. I believe the authors have broken down their study by month already so I'm just looking for a short textual assessment here.
4. the abstract mentions "the region we focus on" in the 3rd paragraph. be explicit, also about the time period. It adds interest to your study, as no study to date has focused on that particular region.