Rebuttal to Correspondence on “A Novel Framework for Airshed Delineation and PM 2.5 Estimation across India Using Machine Learning and Spatial Clustering”

Recommendations W e thank Qing for their interest in our work 1 and for recognizing the novelty of the proposed data-driven airshed framework for India.However, several criticisms appear to arise from assumptions that do not fully reflect the study's objectives or scope, and some points already clarified in the manuscript and its Supporting Information seem to have been overlooked.In particular, the reference cited as evidence of methodological limitations does not substantiate the claims attributed to it.We therefore clarify these issues below and demonstrate that the methodological choices adopted are appropriate for the regional-scale analysis and that the conclusions of this study remain robust.