The referees gave very positive assessments to the first version of the paper and you have given careful responses to their detailed comments. My only worry might be that in making many changes in response to the referee comments your paper might have lost clarity -- but you have decided which recommended changes to make and which not to make -- so I assume that you are content with the revised paper. Therefore I am pleased to accept the paper for publication in ACP 'subject to technical corrections' (two points that I noted in reading quickly through the revised paper -- it is up to you whether you make any changes or leave the paper as it is).

1) Below equation (3): You say "The negative regions of q_phi suggest the possibility of baroclinic instability, because the positive and negative q_phi values in a neighboring region satisfy the necessary condition for the instability (Gill, 1982). In this study, however, negative q_phi is considered as an indication for barotropic instability because the baroclinic term is negligible (not shown)."

It's a bit confusing that you start off by saying that baroclinic instability is suggested and then say that you deduce barotropic instability. Also use of 'The' is a bit confusing. I suggest

"Negative regions of q_phi suggest the possibility of iinstability, because positive and negative q_phi values in a neighboring region are necessary condition for instability (Gill, 1982). This instability may be barotropic or baroclinic. In this study negative q_phi is considered as an indication of barotropic instability because the baroclinic term (3rd term) is negligible (not shown)."

2) l279:"This result is similar to what Lin et al. (2019) mentioned that MRG waves precondition the zonal mean flow before Rossby wave breaking." -- ' ... similar to the suggestion by Lin et al. (2019) that MRG ...' would be better.