Dear Dr. Checa-Garcia,

Thank you for submitting your manuscript entitled "Evaluation of natural aerosols in CRESCENDO-ESMs: Mineral Dust" to Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics, and for your efforts in addressing the Referee comments, as well as the clear information regarding the update to the CNRM results. After reviewing your response to the Referee comments and tracked changes, my decision is "Publish subject to minor revisions".

While the Referee comments have largely been addressed, I would like to ask you to strengthen the response to a few of the comments raised. In particular:

1. The discussions on the topics of "How can model disagreement be resolved?" and "which observations can support further progress" (Referee 1) seem to me to be important. I would like to encourage you to consider whether some version of the comments you have provided in the review response could be fruitfully incorporated into the manuscript.

2. On the topic of the Pearson correlation, raised by Referee 1: to avoid the impression of a subjective value judgment, please make more explicit (in the manuscript text) what you mean by "not robust", or otherwise clarify this sentence.

3. On the discussion of "why the EC-Earth and the NorESM have MEE values that differ from
the other models", this discussion also contains useful information. Again, I would like to encourage you to consider whether it would be appropriate to include some of this information in the manuscript text.

4. Referee 3 had pointed out, in the comment on Page 28, Line 7, statements where additional referencing may be appropriate. The revised version of the text adds referencing and additional details for improvements to the description of soil properties. However, it is still not clear what evidence the statement "the modelled wind surface friction velocity and speed agree better with actual meteorological conditions" is based on. Please provide a source of information or otherwise clarify the basis for this statement.

5. Referee 3 comment on Page 30, Line 26: Adding a reference to Table 8 in this sentence would eliminate any potential for confusion by readers.

Best regards,
Susannah Burrows
Editor, Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics

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Susannah Burrows
Atmospheric Scientist

susannah.burrows@pnnl.gov
+1 (509) 372-6183

Pacific Northwest National Laboratory
Atmospheric Sciences and Global Change Division
P.O. Box 999 MS K-24, Richland, WA 99352, USA
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Dear Dr. Checa-Garcia,

Thank you for addressing the comments previously provided on this manuscript. Since these comments have been sufficiently addressed, my decision is to accept the manuscript.

However, I do have an additional technical correction to request. While reviewing the previous changes I noticed that the following sentence also needs clarification: "For the other comparisons the scatter-plots are informative of the quality of the correlation estimator."

In this sentence, it is not clear what the "other comparisons" refers to, which correlation estimator (Pearson or Spearman) is being referenced, and what is meant by "quality". This sentence should be revised for clarity, or alternatively, could be removed.

Please clarify this during technical revisions to the manuscript.

Best regards,
Susannah Burrows
Editor, Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics