The two reviewers noted substantial improvement of the manuscript and recommend publication after minor revision. Please read their comments carefully and address them adequately. I will perform the final check after your revision.

In addition, based on my own reading, I have the following observations:

1. Methods content should be moved out of the Results section
Some material currently in Section 4.3 (in particular, Equations 1–3 and the description of ensemble metrics) belongs in Section 2 (“Methods”). The Results section should present only the outcomes and their interpretation, not methodological explanations. Moving these elements to Section 2 will significantly improve clarity. (By analogy: the recipe is given before the cake is baked, not after.)


2. Missing units in Figures 9, 10, and 11
Figures 9, 10, and 11 appear to be missing units on the y-axes (temperature, wind speed, shear, etc.). Please revise the axis labels accordingly. The font size of the figures can be slightly reduced if needed to accommodate units.

3. Clarification needed for Figure A1
In Figure A1, the right-hand panels (domain 2) show aliasing artefacts that could mislead readers. In addition, the y-axes of these right-hand panels are not labelled, implying they are identical to the left-hand panels (domain 1). Please confirm whether that is correct and ensure the figure is unambiguous. I also note that “domain 1” and “domain 2” terminology has already been used in Figure 3. Are these the same domain? Consistency and clarity here are important.

4. Possible relocation of Figure 12

Figure 12 quantifies air–sea temperature differences across SST datasets and domains. Because this information characterizes the inputs before the simulations are run, it may be better placed in Section 2 or Section 3 rather than in the Results section.

5. Clarification and strengthening of the quantitative comparison (reviewers’ main remaining concern)

Reviewer 1 notes that the manuscript would benefit from a clearer and more complete presentation of the quantitative results, particularly those related to the correlation analysis. Your response mentions high p-values, but does not specify which variables were correlated with which others. As a result, it is difficult to interpret Table 2 or understand the attempted correlation analysis. There may have been a misunderstanding around the word “correlation.” Reviewer 2 was referring to the correlation between meteorological features. Specifically, they suggested a concise quantitative way to see how environmental inputs relate to model performance. Examples would include:

Correlation (or simply quantitative metric) that shows the link between ΔT (air–sea temperature difference) and low-level shear error, between SST bias and hub-height wind speed bias, etc... Such relationships can be presented descriptively (e.g., correlation coefficients, scatter plots, etc...), without relying on statistical significance tests. The aim is interpretability: helping the reader see which setups tend to perform better and why.

More generally, the paper would be clearer if its structure more explicitly reflected the two-step logic of the study: (1) How the choice of SST dataset and domain affects the modelled meteorological state (this is well presented), and (2) How these differences translate into agreement or disagreement with the lidar observations (this is the part that may have been insufficiently quantified). I think that addressing even better the quantitative link between (1) and (2) would fully address the remaining reviewer concerns.

Thank you for the prompt replies to my feedbacks and the reviewers' feedback. I think the paper can be accepted for publication. I just have a tiny technical correction for the proofread part: Fig 11, third panel (RWES) has an excessive "double bracket" for the unit. Also, please ensure that the table follow the template provided by Copernicus.

Dear authors,
I am happy to follow the recommendation by the Associate Editor and suggest the publication of your manuscript as is.
Thank you for choosing Wind Energy Science for publishing your work.

Best regards
Julia Gottschall (Chief Editor)