The study investigates how climate change and aerosol perturbations influence the stratocumulus-to-cumulus transition over the North-East Pacific. Using Lagrangian large-eddy simulations along idealized trajectories, the authors examine two distinct free-tropospheric humidity conditions, moist and dry, which aims to control the transition mechanism (precipitation driven vs entrainment driven). They analyze two climate scenarios (SSP1-2.6 and SSP3-7.0) from CMIP6 to capture a range of warming and aerosol changes. Results show that in non-precipitating stratocumulus, the CRE is more sensitive to climate change than to aerosol perturbation. However, after the cloud deck breaks up, aerosol effects, mainly through precipitation suppression, become more influential. The study also finds that aerosol–cloud interactions such as the Twomey effect and LWP adjustments are mostly robust to climate change unless cloud fraction is significantly altered.

The topic addressed in the manuscript is important and interesting, with relatively few publications on the subject to date. I therefore think it is valuable for this manuscript to be published. Given the complexity of the problem, which involves considering both changes in meteorology and aerosol effects, I think the authors have done a nice analysis. I do have a few points that I believe should be clarified before publication:

1. The domain size of the simulations is 48 km. Given that the SCT involves boundary layer deepening and the development of wide convective cells, I am concerned that a 48 km domain may be too small to adequately capture the full extent of boundary layer circulations. If the characteristic cell size exceeds the domain size, can the simulation reliably resolve the SCT dynamics?

2. The simulations are based on the composite trajectories from Sandu and Stevens (2011). However, if aerosol–cloud interactions are nonlinear with respect to environmental conditions, the use of a composite trajectory may not reliably capture the true impact of climate change on cloud properties. Could the authors comment on the extent to which this approach might mask important variability or lead to biased conclusions?

3. To create two types of SCT breakup (entrainment-driven and precipitation-driven), the authors reduce the humidity to 27% of the reference value, which leads to an entrainment-driven transition. However, by manipulating the humidity in this way, aren’t the authors effectively prescribing specific climate change scenarios characterized by a drier free troposphere?

4. I am unclear about the need to lower the free-tropospheric humidity in order to trigger an entrainment-driven breakup. As I understand it, the trajectories from Sandu and Stevens (2011) are intended to represent typical SCT cases that include entrainment-driven breakup. If that is the case, wouldn’t increasing the humidity be the approach needed to shift the system toward a precipitation-driven breakup instead? Clarification on this point would be helpful.

5. The paragraph starting at line 157 and the following one are quite difficult to follow. More generally, the results are highly descriptive throughout the manuscript. In my view, the level of detail is overly comprehensive, which makes it challenging to follow. It may be helpful allow the figures to also speak for themselves.

6. I think that a significant portion of the current discussion section would be more appropriately placed in the results section. Several parts read more like continued presentation of results rather than higher-level synthesis.

Specific comments:

1. Figure 4: why are the dashed lines in subplot 1?

2. Line 219-224. This part is somewhat confusing, as it begins with a focus on the entrainment-driven transition (as indicated by the subsection title), but then shifts to emphasizing the role of precipitation.

3. Figure 7: You could add “Moist” and “Dry” labels above the left and right columns.

4. Equation 4: Could you clarify the role of this equation in your analysis? It’s not clear how it is used in the manuscript.

5. Line 348: “meteorological variables or cloud controlling factors” – Aren’t meteorological variables essentially the same as cloud-controlling factors? If not, could you clarify the distinction? If they are the same, using “or” may be misleading.

6. Line 451: You mention here “ the albedo contributions associated with precipitation-suppression are non-linearly coupled to fc changes and cloud albedo” (this is also stated earlier in the manuscript). It is unclear to me what exactly is meant by “non-linearly coupled” in this context. Could you clarify the nature of this coupling?

7. Isn’t the mathematical form in line 451 is redundant? Mathematically it reduces to dCRE. Perhaps a comma is missing after fc.

The paper "Aerosol-Cloud Interactions in Marine Low-Clouds in a Warmer Climate" by Prabhakaran et al. explores the relationship between aerosols, clouds, and climate warming on stratocumulus-to-cumulus transition using large eddy simulations model simulations.  The paper is suitable for publication in the journal Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics. The paper is well written and the research question is novel and so tt meets the journal's requirements in terms of scientific scope, novelty, methodological rigor, and formal structure. I can recommend publishing the paper once the following minor comments have been addressed:

Line 99. The use of CMIP6 data is ambiguous, what does “the global mean outputs from CMIP6” mean? Is it the CMIP6 ensemble mean for the region?

Line 100. How does the LES take into account the CO2 concentration?

Line 124. It would be useful to the reader to mention how much earlier the cloud breakup occurs.

Lines  188-189. “Additionally, on day 2 there is suppression of weak precipitation from the addition of aerosol in SSP1 (Fig. 1e)”. This should be Figure 1f?

Line 326: What is meant by better in “the better collapse in the LWP component”



Since the study is based on a idealized case, it is not clear if it's results can be extrapolated to different types of meteorological conditions and this is also acknowledged in the conclusions. However, it would be comment briefly if this approach can be used to estimate the efficacy of artificial marine cloud brightening since the method of spraying sea water does not only affect the amount of aerosols, but the evaporation of sea water would also have implications on the boundary layer moisture and temperature profile.