Dear Authors,

Thank you for the revised version of your paper. Both reviewers expressed a very high interest in your paper and noted the excellent quality of your work. They nevertheless made a significant number of very constructive comments, to which you answered adequately. I am therefore pleased to accept your paper for publication in The Cryosphere, after you consider the minor comments below. I have also made some very minor style suggestions in your text and also request a slight change to Figure 13.

In general, your responses to the reviewers are very convincing, but this is not always followed by as convincing changes in the text. For example both reviewers repeatedly stress that absorption by impurities is not consistent with the discrepancy between your data and IA2008. While I personally feel your discussion of this aspect in section 4 is adequate, the fact that both reviewers make the same comment may indicate that many other readers will feel the same. Perhaps you may consider stating more strongly that absorption by impurities is clearly not the reason why you obtain higher values than IA2008. You may mention that clearly in the first paragraph of section 4. You may also perhaps sum this up briefly in section 5, while also reminding all the various (inconclusive) possibilities that are mentioned by the reviewers and that you discuss in detail in your response but less so in your text. How about also a short sentence in the abstract stating that absorption by impurities is very unlikely to be the cause of the discrepancy? In any case, these are just suggestions and I will read with interest your rationale for making or not these changes.

On a more general note, editors find it easier to evaluate revisions when authors mention in their response where (line numbers) they have done the changes in their text.

Thank you for submitting your work to The Cryosphere.

Sincerely,

Florent Domine

Dear Authors

Many thanks for the revised version of your paper. I am very pleased to accept it for publication in The Cryosphere. I am convinced that your work will provide very useful fondamental data to the cryospheric science community. Although your paper does not fully solve the isssue of the ice optical properties, I feel that this represents a major contribution to the topic.

Thank you for submitting your paper to The Cryosphere and I wish you the best of luck in your future research.

Best regards

Florent Domine