Dear authors,

Thank you for your revised version. Since there were quite some substantial changes in order to address the concerns raised by one of the reviewers regarding the limitations of the VIIRS Flares Only" product, I requested additional reviewers' comments on the revised version. Unfortunately, these comments have been very inconclusive from "accept as is" to "decline". I would therefore like to ask the authors to address or reply to the new concerns raised by one of the reviewers before proceeding with the publication process can be considered (please see below).

Thank you,

Axel Lauer (handling topical editor)

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My following comments are based on the revised submission by the authors. The authors developed a method of estimating gaseous pollutant emissions from gas flaring for southern West Africa by incorporating various source data and theoretical equations. Gas flaring is not a global issue, but could be considerable at the regional scale, especially in southern West Africa where oil and gas production activities are substantial. I do think this study is very meaningful and innovative, however, the biggest flaw of this study comes from too many assumptions of the input parameters for estimating the emissions.
For instance, (1) the authors indicated that “IU14 remarked, that the reaction condition for flaring of η≫ 0.5 and δ > 0.9 should be the norm in regions”, but why η was set to 0.8 and δ was set to 0.95? (2) The specific heat capacity of associated petroleum gas should be highly dependent on its chemical composition. The application of a constant value is not appropriate. (3) The estimation of fuel gas density highly depends on the gauge pressure. It is indicated by the author the gauge pressure varied from 0 – 34kPa. By taking 0 and 34kPa as inputs, respectively, the range of estimated fuel gas densities could be 3 – 4 times different. However, the authors didn't explain why 34kPa was taken.
Although the authors spent lengthy discussions in uncertainty analysis of different input parameters, the results of this study are not informative. As part of the field campaign DACCIWA, the mission should at least investigate some region-specific parameters of the fuel gas such as gauge pressure. Most importantly, the emissions should be evaluated by the model as the campaign should have a suite of measurement data. Without this validation, this manuscript seems not coincide with scope of GMD. Therefore, I suggest a resubmission by comprehensively evaluating the emissions created in this study.