The manuscript is logically coherent and well-structured. However, the research content appears somewhat simplistic. While related studies have already been published, this research does have the novelty of being the first conducted on One Tree Island in the Southern Great Barrier Reef. Nonetheless, the overall content of the paper may be considered relatively simple for a journal of ACP's standards, and the innovation presented is not particularly strong. I recommend adding new research content to enrich the manuscript and enhance its contribution to the field.

This paper offers valuable aerosol vertical profiles through Max-DOAS and MPL, which should have provided significant scientific insights for the community. However, the current manuscript did not match the journal's quality. Besides, some additional work needs to be addressed. Here are my comments and suggestions:

Major comments:

1. line 240-243: “Examining the cloud filtered aerosol extinction profiles in Figure 4(c), we find the high depolarization ratio values directly above the boundary layer are present during both cloud-flagged and cloud-free periods. This indicates a change in the scattering characteristics (shape and/or composition) of aerosols at or just above the boundary layer, whether clouds are present or not.“ The boundary layer is mentioned several times in the paper, what is the exact altitude of the boundary layer? Is the determination of the boundary layer consistent in MAX-DOAS and MPL?
2. Equations (10) and (11), as well as a description and explanation of the calculation method, should be placed in section 2.
3. Line 333-336: “In almost all hourly bins, the smoothing of MPL extinction by MAX-DOAS averaging kernels brought the MPL AOD closer to the MAX-DOAS AOD. However, the smoothed MPL AOD remains higher than the MAX-DOAS in almost all hourly bins even with vertical sensitivity and resolution accounted for.” Can you try to explain why this phenomenon occurs?
4. Line 349-350: ”It is important context for proposed marine cloud brightening experiments at the GBR that aerosol layers can exist up to 2 km altitude.” Could you elaborate on the effect of the height of the aerosol layer on marine cloud brightening in the manuscript based on this observation？
5. The aerosol vertical profile and the aerosol optical depth are analyzed in detail from MAX-DOAS and MPL at One Tree Island in the Southern Great Barrier Reef in the paper. In this observation, can you provide a comparison of the similarities and differences between the results of the two measurement and their respective applications?

Minor comments:

1. Line 233: “0.112 and 0.294 counts.km2 [(𝛍J) (𝛍s)]-1”, “𝛍” should be “μ”. Same as Figure 2
2. Line 238: “pattern of being <0.01” needs space between “<” and “0.01”.  Same as line 238: ” >0.02”, and line 325: ” a factor >2.5”.
3. In Figure 3 Pictures (a) and (b) are resized consistently, and (c) (d), and (e) will look better if they are resized consistently. In addition, the background color of (a), (b), (c), （d）, and (e) can be removed.