Dear Lindsey, dear co-authors,

Thank you for your revision of your manuscript. The manuscript has clearly improved but needs still to be more concise as also indicated by the reviewer. Several sections are still difficult to understand and need further refinement. I agree also with the reviewer that the paper is still too long and should be shortened further. I feel that the paper can be shortened by ~20% without loss of relevant information.
In addition to the reviewers comments I ask you to consider the following:

Abstract/General content:
You nicely write about the general importance of the study, e.g. with respect to understanding glacier changes and water resources. However, in the abstract no information about the results in this respect are given. Be more quantitative and include at least rough information about the mean measured surface lowering (and an estimate for the entire glacier, if possible).
L. 14: You mention a potential error of up to 0.3 m due to insufficient overlap. However, it is unclear from this sentence whether this is a specific problem of your study and how the 0.3 m affects the significance of the result.
L. 25: “in line with the roughest values previously published for glacier ice”. This is also unclear.
L. 81ff (Section 2.1).
The heading is misleading. You include here also information of measurements, but no information about the general climatic conditions (which I expected here).
L. 85: “study areas”. This term might be misleading. I understand that you had two test sites, correct? Then write so.
L. 116: Include short information about how you corrected for atmospheric conditions and where you got the information about the conditions (probably from the AWS but not clear from the sentence).
L. 122: Unclear here why the measurements could not be done on the same day.
Section 2.7.
This section is hard to read and to understand. It is also too long. Write briefly about the experience from previous studies and then provide a rational for your approach based on these experiences and describe then clearly what you did. It might also be worth to think to move some info about previous studies into the introduction.
L. 270/271: Here you describe the test site and where TLS scans were taken. These sentences fit, hence, better into the methods sections.
L. 279f: Methods
L. 284: The differences are not in figure 2b but in the data. Correct the sentence. What do you mean with “holes”? “Data gaps”?
Section 3.2 About meteorological conditions.
This section is a bit misplaced here. The knowledge about the meteorological conditions and the methods of measurements should be presented earlier and not in the results section.
Section 3.3 “Aerial scans of penitents surfaces”
The heading fits not well as the first part of this section presents important information about surface lowering and mass loss. This is important and more information could be provided. Tell about the mass loss of the entire glacier based on these measurements here.
L. 313: The sentence and the approach is not really clear to me. How did you calculate the volume change and the surface lowering? This should be described in the methods section and not the results section.
L. 322 and elsewhere (e.g. but not limited to L. 345/346): Use uncertainty instead of error. Error refers to the deviation of the truth.
L. 343: “compare well”. Be more precise.
L. 364ff and L. 995ff: These lines fit better in the discussion and could shortly be further elaborated.

Discussion
General: The discussion is quite lengthy, hard to follow and should more precise. Shorten and link the sections better to each other.
Section 4.1 and 4.3: The surface roughness depends on the morphology. They can maybe be combined.
L. 402: “broadly meet” be more precise.
L. 408/410: shortwave “radiation”.
L. 420: Was the modelling done by Lhermitte et al. 2014? This study seems to be quite relevant as it addresses the same glacier. Present this study in the Introduction.
L. 453ff: These are important results and do not fit in a discussion about methods. I suggest moving to the results section and discuss the implication in the discussion section.
L. 458: How can you state that these measurements would underestimate the mass loss of the entire glacier? Are mass balance measurements existing?
L. 488: What kind of glaciers do you refer to?

Conclusions
The conclusions should be more specific. Where should and could the presented methods be used?
L. 534f: Here you mention the first time a “number of potentially superior alternative set-up … and software is now available”. This is important information. These alternatives should be shortly mentioned and discussed in the discussion section. Maybe some of your problems can be overcome with other alternatives.

Supplement:
The Supplementary files should be in a single pdf and only the ply scripts in one .zip fie.

Please provide a point to point reply to both mine and the reviewers comments along with the revised version of the manuscript.

Let me know in case you have any questions.

Best regards,

Tobias Bolch – Editor TC

Dear Lindsey,

Thank you for your additional efforts in revising the mansucript. I am happy to accept it now.
Please make sure that the supplementary material is propperly referenced in the main article, the formatting is correct and it contains also a list of the cited references within the supplement. In case you do not want to include the scripts as supplement, provide the info that they are available upon request.
Please contact the typesetters from the editorial office in case you have questions in this regard.

Thank you for your contribution to TC,

Tobias Bolch - Editor TC