Dear Dr. Nevison and co-authors,

I am now in receipt of all reviews of your manuscript " Observational and model evidence for a prominent stratospheric influence on variability in tropospheric nitrous oxide". Based on the reviews and on my own reading, an editorial decision of Minor Revision has been reached.

First, I would like to thank you for preparing the revised version and mostly reflecting the referee comments from the open discussion, which led to significant improvement of the study. This is acknowledged jointly by both reviewers as well.

Reviewer 1 - Dr. Farahnaz Khosrawi, after commenting on the significant improvements in the revised version, goes on to recommend acceptance after minor revisions. Still, Dr. Khosrawi highlights few outstanding minor issues, which are partly editorial in nature, but also lists some scientific critiques under the Specific comments. I urge you to take advantage of the editorial suggestions and to carefully reply to the scientific comments. Based on my own reading, I would like to add to the specific comment P19 Fig. 6 by Dr. Khosrawi on statistical significance a point, that the reader needs to see additional statistical information also around Figs. 1, 2, 3, 4 and 9a. Please add information here on the spread behind the mean seasonal cycles and on the representativeness of the mean monthly anomalies, considering also the uncertainties of the measurements where applicable.
Finally, Dr. Farahnaz Khosrawi has graciously offered a list of technical corrections which are necessary to improve the understanding, and therefore the impact, of what you are trying to say. We should both thank the reviewer for this as it improves the final product.

Recommendation for minor revisions is echoed also by Reviewer 2, who appears to remain less convinced about the quality and significance of your manuscript. In spite of this the reviewer first makes it clear that the manuscript has been improved. Importantly, the reviewer then brings to our attention that some of their original remarks have not been addressed. This includes possible important points as the solar cycle effect and relation to stratospheric N2O studies. I second the reviewer's request that all of their comments from the previous round need to be properly addressed. The reviewer also graciously offers a long list of minor and technical comments and suggestions, which we should again thank the reviewer very much for, because they are driven with the intention to improve the manuscript on all fronts.

Finally, I would like to add one additional comment based on my own reading and shear interest in your study. It seems to me that the positive anomalies shown across the figures are never discussed in the manuscript (except in the Supplement).
Do you assume the positive anomalies to be a poor consequence of your methodology and the existence of negative anomalies? Especially based on Figs. 5 and 10 I would argue that the positive anomalies can stand for some physical process omitted in the discussion. For example, in Fig. 10 for 2017 (ATom2) except the existence of the positive anomaly centered around 55°S seemingly stemming from the tropics, the negative anomalies can be locally seen stronger than in 2016, which contradicts your discussion around this figure and the link with BDC you are trying to draw.

To conclude, I have clicked on the box labelled "minor revisions". This is because I feel the major scientific issues have been addressed, while the remaining ones can be dealt with given some additional work by the authors. When I receive the second revision, I will read it carefully and if I feel that it has addressed all the concerns discussed here and in the reviews, I will be pleased to accept it for publication. On the other hand, if there is any ambiguity, I reserve the right to send it back to both reviewers for further comment.


Sincerely,

RNDr. Petr Šácha, Ph.D.
Editor
Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics

Dear authors,

thank you very much for carefully considering all of the referee and my additional comments.
I am happy to write you that I reached the editorial decision of "Publish subject to technical corrections" .

The corrections I ask for concern the captions of Figs. 1 and 9 and the related discussion of results, where you should indicate that you newly incorporate also the uncertainty.

Thank you very much again for publishing with ACP
and wishing you all the best for your future work.
Best regards,
Petr Šácha.