The paper is well written and appropriate for ACP. It provides a good overview of the aerosol conditions over the Indian Subcontinent. The CALIPSO data set is the basis for this and was carefully analyzed.

Minor revision are requested.

Abstract: The text is quite lengthy. I would appreciate a compact abstract, just 10-15 lines on methods and data, and a few key reults. Many details are given in unnecessarily large detail. Such a detail description can be given in the summary section.

P2, line 54: Without these field campaigns, one would not know much about, e.g., lidar ratios, used in the CALIPSO data analysis. Such snapshot-like field campaigns are required to get a deep insight in aerosol properties. Without them, nobody would trust the ‘larger picture’ provided by the  CALIPSO data sets.

P4, line 103-104: Are these lidar ratios from 23 to 70 sr in agreement with the lidar ratio observations realized during field campaigns such as INDOEX?

P4, l105-110: When using CALIPSO backscatter observations and MODIS AOT values one has the chance to get the column lidar ratios (AOD divided by the column backscatter). These values should be in harmony with the CALIPSO lidar ratios used in your data analysis.

Such studies are just indications that you did a lot in terms of quality assurance.

Page 6 is terrible with all the ASSA, OSSA; deltaSSA, eSSA. I had to write down all the abbreviations to get not lost.

P10, l297: Do you know the papers of Hofer et al. (ACP 2017, 2020) on central Asian dust observations (Dushanbe, Tajikistan), and Hu et al. (ACP, 2021) on western China dust observation (Taklamakan area). These papers could be cited.

Hofer, J., Althausen, D., Abdullaev, S. F., Makhmudov, A. N., Nazarov, B. I., Schettler, G., Engelmann, R., Baars, H., Fomba, K. W., Müller, K., Heinold, B., Kandler, K., and Ansmann, A.: Long-term profiling of mineral dust and pollution aerosol with multiwavelength polarization Raman lidar at the Central Asian site of Dushanbe, Tajikistan: case studies, Atmos. Chem. Phys., 17, 14559–14577, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-17-14559-2017, 2017.

Hofer, J., Ansmann, A., Althausen, D., Engelmann, R., Baars, H., Fomba, K. W., Wandinger, U., Abdullaev, S. F., and Makhmudov, A. N.: Optical properties of Central Asian aerosol relevant for spaceborne lidar applications and aerosol typing at 355 and 532 nm, Atmos. Chem. Phys., 20, 9265–9280, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-20-9265-2020, 2020.

Hu, Q., Wang, H., Goloub, P., Li, Z., Veselovskii, I., Podvin, T., Li, K., and Korenskiy, M.: The characterization of Taklamakan dust properties using a multiwavelength Raman polarization lidar in Kashi, China, Atmos. Chem. Phys., 20, 13817–13834, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-20-13817-2020, 2020.

Fig. 2: I would appreciate if OSSA and cSSA would be explained in the figure caption….

Fig.3: Please state in the caption that these observations are taken by CALIOP. What shows the dashed line in Fig.3c?

Fig.4, the PDR values are derived from the respective VDR values by using the particle backscatter coefficient profiles. So the PDR profiles are uncertain. How trustworthy they are… should be discussed! For example, the red PDR fields (4b, 4c) show values of 30-40% depolarization ratio as THREE MONTH MEAN VALUES. Such high values cannot be explaind by pure mineral dust. Desert dust produces 30% (so yellow colors), and at extreme conditions, close to dust sources, 35% may happen, but only in some cases.

Fig.5: cSSA, OSSA should be explained in the caption.

Zonal variations of the vertical distribution of atmospheric aerosols over the Indian region and the consequent radiative effects Kala et al.,

A compilation of vertical profile and horizontal data for atmospheric aerosol properties (SSA, extinction coefficients and depolarization ratios).  This group has produced several papers that have similar flavor to this one, primarily taking data and doing radiative forcing calculations using SBDAT. The ‘novelty’ here may be the use of CALIPSO data to build vertical profiles that seem to have been rescaled using surface observations from the various field studies conducted around India, including the ICARB. I don’t have any big issues with the paper, except that it doesn’t offer anything new in terms of analysis/modeling. The two major concerns would be

1. There is not much ground validation for the data in terms of comparisons with some ground based or aircraft data collection performed by the team
2. The ‘correction’ of the ASSA over the ocean using for profiles uses a the OSSA extended over the ocean and obtain a regression factor that was applied to ASSA. This seems arbitrary in some sense. Why not use a physics informed method that uses the differences in temperature profiles, water vapor profiles or PBL heights between the coastal and overland regions to inform the corrections?

Beyond these two, the manuscript badly needs a comparative evaluation with some model simulations. It is hard to get a sense to understand how this will feedback into improving models (regional and global).  There are several runs performed as part of the CMIP6 with GCMs of various resolution and model output from the (AerChemMIP) for example. These should be accessible; how does this dataset compare with these simulations.  There is a lot of qualitative description of mixing and gradients that are driven by dynamics. Using a model result to put these in context would be essential and making all the discussion more concrete. Without an accompanying model evaluation, the added value of this product to literature is questionable.

Some Specific Comments:

Line 45:  Feng et al., 2016 did a detailed evaluation of the radiative forcing due to differences in land and ocean vertical profiles using MPLNet, CALIPSO and WRF-CHEM (doi:10.5194/acp-16-247-2016) and seems highly relevant to work discussed here. How do the calculations on radiative forcing performed here differ or similar to that discussed in that publication?

Line 204:  What dynamics are of importance here? Synoptic, mesoscale or boundary layer?Table 4: How do these heating rates compare to those being calculated by GCMs and models from AEROChemMIP?