I'd like to accept this without going back to the referees. In looking through the revised version of the paper I noticed some minor technical points which are listed below. Please can you address those.

More substantially, your reply to Referee 3 is not very clear about whether or not you have actually made any changes in response to the request for more information about assimilation etc. Your general point is fine -- that one can't included a tutorial on assimilation and you have given some useful comment in the reply. My impression is that you have made various changes in the text that make some of the important points re assimiilation clearer -- but they are little scattered around in the text. Please can you provide an updated reply that makes it clear that you have included a bit more information/clarification on this topic -- and alongside that consider whether the information could be better organised in the text (and include that point in the updated reply if you do change something further).

I then expect to accept the paper (and will be able to assure Referee 3 that the their recommendation has been properly considered and that an appropriate response has been provided).

l10: "We analyze the dynamical structure of the vortices produced by these two wildfires and demonstrate how they are maintained
by the assimilation of data from instruments measuring the signature of the vortices in the temperature and ozone field."

Needs changing -- it is not data assimilation that maintains the vortices -- it is "assimilation of the real temperature and ozone signatures of the vortices that explains the appearance and maintenance of the vortices in the constructed dynamical fields"

l39: "In particular, a stratospheric rise of up to 30 K day−1 was diagnosed" -- this could be interpreted as a heating rate (rate of change of temperature) or an ascent rate (expressed in terms of potential temperature). What is the intention -- to emphasise the large heating rate or the large ascent rate? If the latter then it might be clearer (particularly at this stage of the paper) to express it in terms of an equivalent rate of change of geometric heat.

l118: "This is true to a large extend" > "This is true to a large extent"

l169: "This early stage is described in great details by Torres et al" > "detail" not "details".

Thank you for responding to my request for further minor changes. I am pleased to accept your paper for publication in ACP.