Dear authors,

Thank you for your careful revisions. I received one review for your revised version but unfortunately the second reviewer never replied and did not provide a review. In order not further delay the publication I reviewed the manuscript by myself.
I agree with the reviewer that most of the comments were well addressed and that the manuscript has significantly improved. I am especially also pleased that pervious work is now well considered and discussed.
However, as also mentioned by the reviewer there is a substantial difference between your results and previous studies. This needs to be discussed more in detail. You should especially provide better information about the reasons for the difference to the Earl and Gardner inventory and show some overlays of outlines. This should be straight forward as the outlines are available.


Further comments:

P. 2 L. 7/8: It might be interesting to include the information (e.g. in brackets) for the readers who are not familiar with Russian that “sredinny” means “northern” and “vostocny” “eatstern”.
L. 29: Include the citation of the specific part/issue of the Soviet Glacier Inventory and provide more specific information about the actual years of the image sources which were used for glacier mapping.

P. 3, L. 5/6: I do not agree that there is a real difference between the numbers presented by Muraviev and Solomina et al.. The numbers match actually quite well considering the uncertainty. Can you provide information from which the source of information. I assume that Solomina et al. (2007) did not map the glaciers by themselves.
L. 7: Any information about the size threshold Earl and Gardner used?

P. 4, L. 5/6: Include the information which processing level was used and where the data was downloaded. Level 1T scenes are orthorectified and usually no additional processing in necessary. If you did the orthorectification include the information how your performed it.
L. 13: The scenes have usually a resolution of 30/15 m. But there are also scences which were resampled to 28.5 m (e.g. if obtained from landcover.org). But then usually the panchromatic band was resampled to 14.25 m according to my knowledge. Please clarify.
L. 15 of “February” 2000, since the SRTM DEM was acquired 11-20 Feb. 2000. Include also which version of the SRTM DEM you used and where you downloaded the data.

P-5, L. 28: Not clear why only 15m. Did you map based on the panchromatic band or did you perform a resolution merge? Clarify in the methods section.

P. 6: Chapter 4.1
Include here the information about the debris coverage (P. 7, 25ff)
L. 14: I suggest to use km instead of m. for the glacier length.

P. 8: Section 5 Discussion
- Compare your results not only to studies on Kamchatka but also to adjacent glacierized mountain ranges to put your results into the regional (and maybe also into the global context).
- A rough estimation of the glacier response time would be useful.

P. 9, L. 5: The references are valuable but you need to consider that they address volume/mass changes and not area changes. Include also or replace by other relevant ones.
L. 9: Similar: Paul & Haeberli (2008) address volume changes.
L: 14: Omit one “.” after “warming.
Section: 5.3.2: Include and compare your results to similar other studies.
P. 10: Discuss the influence of debris-cover a bit more in depth, e.g. Vinogradov is a valuable reference, but there are many recent ones. Are there any glacial lakes/ice cliffs which may enhance the ice melt? You may also consider that Pieczonka & Bolch found comparatively little area change (clearly below the global average) in Central Tien Shan (with many debris-covered glaciers), but the mass changes were similar to the global average. This might be due to the fact that debris-covered glaciers show less area changes than mass changes as also several other studies found in the Himalaya. I do not ask for an in depth analysis but 3-4 sentences in this regard would be very useful.


I am looking forward to your revised manuscript.
Let me know in case you have any questions.

Best regards,

Tobias – Editor TC

Dear authors,

Thank you very much for your additional carefull consideration of the comments (incl. correcting my wrong translation of sredinny).
I am happy to accept the manuscript now as is. Thank you for your contribution to TC.

Best regards,

Tobias Bolch