Dear Authors,
Many thanks for your careful consideration of the reviewers' comments and thorough revisions to the manuscript.
One reviewer identified some outstanding issues regarding the revised manuscript, and I would ask you to please consider and address them before the paper can be accepted.
Best wishes,
Ewa

Many thanks to the authors for careful consideration and addressing of the further reviewer's concerns! I think the work is in good shape to be accepted for publication.

After careful re-reading of the manuscript, I have some final (overall minor) comments of mine regarding the interpretation of the chain of events behind the early-winter ozone climate feedback (1980-2000). In particular, I remain slightly skeptical about highlighting the role enhanced LW cooling upon higher early-winter Arctic ozone as a driver of the enhanced wave propagation and BDC (although I acknowledge that it is impossible to really identify specific drivers in these fully-coupled simulations).

First, the authors state “Lin and Ming (2021) noted that radiative damping due to longwave cooling could intensify wave dissipation and further enhance subsidence of the BDC”. But the work of Lin and Ming focuses on the springtime stratosphere, when ozone absorbs SW radiation and hence any changes in ozone can either enhance or offset radiative damping rates by changing SW heating. Such a mechanism would not be at play in the winter Arctic stratosphere (as no sunlight). In addition, the enhancement of QRL under higher ozone is the result BDC strengthening, and as such it is hard to argue that it is also a driver of the BDC changes.

To me, the enhancement in BDC could just be related to just the presence of interactive ozone to begin with (before any changes in ozone take effect). For example, studies of McCormack et al. (2011, doi:10.1029/2010GL045937) showed that the presence of interactive ozone gives rise to a climatologically weaker, warmer and more disturbed winter Arctic vortex. It is possible that similar processes could also be at play when talking about Arctic trends, especially if the system leans towards stronger BDC and warmer Arctic trend even in the absence of any ozone feedback. And once ozone is allowed to respond, increase in ozone under stronger BDC would amplify the climatological ozone-wave feedbacks, giving rise to even stronger BDC trend.

So I wonder if some sentences need to be toned down in the current manuscript, and a statement added that it is impossible to fully decouple different processes in these coupled simulations (although I agree that this study provides a great step towards that direction!). I also wonder if the left panel of figure 11 should really have “enhanced BDC/wave dissipation” at the very top? (instead of increase in O3 which could be argued is a cause of the BDC change?).

Either way, I would encourage the authors to consider the above points and see if they agree that any changes are warranted. I will then accept the manuscript for publication.