Thank you very much for your replies to the reviewers' comments and to the comment by A.M. Sawyer. Based on the reviewers' suggestions and your response, I invite you to submit a revised version of your manuscript. This revised manuscript will most likely undergo further review by one of the two original reviewers. Please take into account the reviewers' suggestions when revising the manuscript.

In the revised manuscript, the data versions should definitely be stated, preferably already in the first sentence of the abstract. I apologize for not noting this omission during my initial reading of the manuscript. In agreement with the comment by A. M. Sawyer, I also strongly encourage you to include the latest data versions. If needed, I would be glad to extend the deadline for potential revisions. On the other hand, when including the new versions, I would argue that it may be worthwhile to also retain the analysis of the older versions for comparison. After all, the older versions were released and used in other studies, and I would find it interesting to discuss the differences between the versions in the manuscript, independent of whether they are large or small, preferably in a separate section. If possible, the emphasis should, however, be on the latest versions since they are more relevant with respect to future studies. In case repeating the analysis with the new data versions is not feasible, please state in the manuscript that new versions are available.

I very much appreciate that the author has updated the manuscript using a newer version of the MISR data and I would like to once more thank Dr. A. M. Sayer for his contribution to the interactive discussion.

The following point regarding MODIS from the author's response should be clarified in the materials and methods section:

Both dark target and deep blue algorithms have been used. Dark target retrievals were used over water regions while deep blue data were used over land. For regions like Bahrain where large water body surrounds land, a combined Dark Target and Deep Blue AOD for land and Ocean has been used.

As far as I can see, the last point raised by reviewer #1 was not answered. Table 1 says that AERONET data for Cairo is available for 2005 -2007, but this is inconsistent with Fig. 4b and the newly added text. Is the data displayed in Figure 3b available from the AERONET website? Please re-check!


l. 95 to measures -> measures
l. 110: Terra's -> Terra
l. 117: provides -> provide
l. 120: designed aerosol -> designed for aerosol
l. 125: for (C005) -> ? please clarify.
l. 126: land respectively -> land, respectively.
l. 197: A good aspect -> An advantage
l. 211: less error -> smaller deviations from the AERONET data
l. 226f: either "than those" -> "than that" or else: "daily variability ... s" -> "daily variabilities ... are"
l. 227: at -> in
l. 264 and also in lines 267, 436, and 808: Long-range -> Long-term
l. 275: omit "of"
l. 289: illustrated -> shown
l. 318: capture -> captures
l. 379: present -> represent
l. 425: Can -> Can be
l. 425: atmosphere -> the atmosphere
l. 479: while show -> while they show
l. 480: do a good job -> perform well
l. 481: present -> represent

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