Using a new merged ozone data set, C.E. Sioris and co-authors investigate the trends and variability of ozone in the tropical lower stratosphere. The results presented in a recent ACPD article indicate a statistically significant negative trend at all altitudes from 18-25km over the period 1984-2012 in the merged SAGE-II/OSIRIS dataset. Trends reach up to -6.5% per decade at 18.5km, with underlying strong variations from ENSO, the QBO and tropopause height. The full abstract can be found here.