The study presents convection permitting simulations on how aerosol affects the amount of precipitation in the mountainous terrain. Although the results are very similar to earlier studies in similar environments, it nicely adds on existing literature and in the discussion references are adequately made. As the aerosol effect on precipitation is highly relevant especially in the locations vulnerable for climate change and changing aerosol emissions, the study fits well in the scope of ACP. I find the manuscript well written and have only a few comments I suggest being addressed before acceptance to the final publication.

As both ARI and ACI effects are analyzed, a more detailed information related to ACI would be needed.  Currently there is no information about CCN or cloud droplet number concentrations and how those are affected by changing emissions. As the manuscript itself contains already quite many figures, these could be also provided as supplementary material, but discussed in the main text together with changes in updraft velocities and liquid/ice water content.

Minor comments

Lines 84-90: Barnan and Gokhale (2022) is later referenced, but as the aerosol effect is studied also there with quite similar setup as here, the clear difference between that and this study should be presented. The same holds also to Adhikari and Mejia (2022).

Line 190: Are the aerosol properties only altered in WRF-Chem simulation always employing the same boundary conditions from CAM-Chem? If so, is the domain large enough to exclude the aerosol effect caused by aerosol changes outside the boundaries of WRF-domain?

Line 194: Aerosol radiation “feedback” should probably be “interaction”.

3.1 Model Evaluation: It is well known that the relationship between AOD and CCN concentration might ne very week. Still there is no discussion how well the simulated aerosol size distribution matches with observations. Are such observations completely missing from the area?

Lines 297-299: It is difficult to see the elevational gradient in observed precipitation both using direct observations in Fig 5 or satellite data in Fig 6. Thus stating that model captures the elevational gradient based on data presented is quite strongly said and seems actually opposite that model simulations has a gradient nonexistent in the observations.

General comments:

The Himalayan ecosystem has been of immense interest to scientists today for its great role in weather pattern of the region wherein millions of people in particular the mountain farmers are directly affected from the extreme and unpredictable weather. Rainfall in particular has been drastically affected in the region. Several have studied and presented results pertaining to the connection of aerosols with rainfall pattern. This study also presents much similar results with an attempt to focus additionally on the elevation-dependent rainfall. While the focus is more on the simulated results, the selection of appropriate PBL scheme, and model evaluation vaguely presented and no discussion on altitudinal profile of aerosols in the region. How appropriate it may be to compare with the AOD of cloud-free conditions. Dealing with uncertainty is a great deal in such studies even then uncertainties arising from rain data, model evaluation, boundary conditions and PBL scheme could also have been focussed. The manuscript is well structured and well written. A few concerns are given below:

Specific comments:

1. Several references are cited. Some requires critical discussion in particular .
2. In figure 13 (a), surface temperature is high and seen extended up to about 5000 m. The cloud fraction (figure 11) and precipitation (figure 8) do not seem to be in conformity.
3. Table 1 needs detailed information.