Both reviewers acknowledge that you have responded to their comments on the first version of the paper. However my opinion is that further revisions to the paper are needed to make it suitable for publication in ACP.

Reviewer 2 in particular has made several further comments and in particular notes that in several cases you have given an argument in the response but have not included that argument in the revised paper. Reviewer 2's view is that 'The presented arguments are still very speculative and that needs to pointed out more clearly, in part by including more of the discussion given in the responses in the manuscript.'

Please will you address reviewer 2's further comments in revising the paper further and particular I encourage to include in the revised paper more of the discussion and supporting evidence you have previously given in the responses.

Reviewer 1 has also made the comment to me that your responses to his/her major comments are acceptable but minimal. Having looked more closely at this I tend to agree. In particular with regard to reviewer 1's first and second major comment, whilst you have demonstrated thermodynamic consistency, you have not really provided an explanation in terms of processes. Perhaps we have to accept that at present there is no clear explanation, but including more of your responses to reviewer 2 in a revised paper will improve things (by acknowledging uncertainty or mentioning relevant results from previous work).

With respect to reviewer 1's 3rd major comment about ice clouds, your reply is a little confusing. Are you saying that the ice clouds are appearing through the mechanism of convective activity extending higher in the TTL? How are you sure that the ice clouds are not simply occurring because of large-scale cooling and hence condensation?

Other specific comments are:

p8 l24: 'which may balance the third and fourth terms' -- it seems unsatisfactory to leave this as 'may' -- surely you could verify this balance from the model?

p10 l18: Clarify this reference -- is the paper that has now been submitted to ACPD as a companion paper?



In making revisions to the paper please can you make a list of the changes you have made in response to the comments of reviewer 2 and to my own comments above and provide reasons if you have chosen not to make changes.

I expect to consider the revised version of the paper myself without sending it again to the referees.

You haven't provided a revised version of the paper -- only your proposed revisions -- and I cannot make the final acceptance decision until I have received the revised paper.

Regarding your proposed revisions:

Your response to Reviewer 1

Your proposed changes are an improvement. I suggest that you add to the revised text for p9l23-p10l2 an explicit reminder to the reader that in previous studies the convection was parametrized rather than being explicitly resolved. Re the revised text for p10l14-p11l4 -- 'convective activity was studied by Chae and Sherwood', 'in observational results'.

Your response to Reviewer 2.

identifying a causal relationship -- you are not entirely convincing on this point -- the fact is that to be certain you would have to run simulations in which the sudden warming was removed, or you would have to have longer simulations where the statistical relationship between changes in convective activity and sudden warmings could be more firmly established. My recommendation is that you acknowledge that there is uncertainty here, and perhaps also note that the connection between tropical tropospheric changes and sudden warmings has been established more carefully in other papers (give references) and therefore you have good reason to believe that in this single short-duration simulation you are seeing a real physical connection.

Finally I think that further acknowledgement that arguments are speculative and that further work is needed would be helpful -- that does not detract from the value of your paper.

I look forward to seeing a revised version of the paper in which you have made your proposed changes addressing some of the extra points I set out above.

Given your further revisions I am now pleased to accept the paper for publication in ACP.