Dear Dr. Klinger

Thank you for your revised manuscript. Both reviewers of the paper seem to feel that the article is potentially of considerable scientific importance for elucidating the contribution of radiative effects on droplet growth in clouds.

However, I remain concerned about the responses to Reviewer 1 in particular and feel they may need more development. Reviewer 1 has two primary concerns. The first is with regards to the discussion of droplets of a size sufficiently large to fall within a model that does not let them do so. The second is with regards to the sensitivity of the (rather small) described perturbations to variability in thermodynamical inputs.

One approach to these issues would be to analytically calculate characteristic timescales for e.g. radiatively driven growth, fall-out, recirculation, buoyancy driven thermodynamic fluctuations etc. that could be used to help better interpret the numerical results and provide a more convincing basis for refuting the concerns of Reviewer 1.

Also, in a revised response, please take care for each reviewer comment to give the changed wording in the text in the revision document.

Regards,

Tim Garrett

Dear Dr. Klinger,

Thank you for providing a revised manuscript that makes the justification for the study more clear. In my opinion, the paper is a worthy addition to the field and should be published subject to one minor change.

I do recommend including timescales in the study a brief discussion, perhaps on p. 7 to clarify the study motivation. The three timescales I recommend discussing are those for "Diffusional droplet growth", "Diffusional droplet growth with thermal radiative effects" and "Sedimentation". I note that the timescale for buoyancy driven motion is 1/N where N is the moist Brunt-Vaisala frequency and is therefore about 200 s. The recirculation time should be the same.

Please take care to avoid the confusion of using the symbol \tau for forcing in the article, and also for timescale.

Regards,

Tim Garrett

Dear Dr. Klinger,

I am happy to forward your article for publication with the changes now made to describe the associated timescales. Congratulations on your contribution to solving the problem of rain initiation in convective clouds.

Regards,

Tim Garrett