Dear Authors,

Your revised paper has now been evaluated by both referees. Although they are both quite positive and acknowledge that the revised manuscript is strongly improved, one of them still has a few constructive comments (that I would rank between minor/major).

You will find their evaluation below or attached.

To facilitate the review process, please attach to your revised manuscript a cover letter detailing the changes you made in response to all their comments. Make sure this rebuttal letter makes a clear distinction between the referee’s comments, your responses and the changes you made to the manuscript.

Best regards,

Etienne Berthier

Carturan et al.,
Revised version, March 2016

Dear Authors,
Thanks for the revision of your paper and for taking into account or answering to the reviewer’s comments.
I have thus the pleasure to accept your manuscript for publication in The Cryosphere after taking into account the minor edits provided below by reviewer 2 and myself.
Thanks a lot for choosing The Cryosphere to publish your work,
Best regards,
Etienne Berthier

My final editorial comments:
TC discourages citing papers that are not finally accepted (was not an issue in TCD because there is often sufficient time for the paper to be accepted meanwhile). So Carturan, 2016 should be replaced with “unpublished data” except if, meanwhile, the paper has been accepted.
L130. In the abstract Oct-May and June-Sept should be replaced with October-May and June-September (and the abbreviations defined when they first occur in the main text, an alternative would be to keep the month written in full)
L233. ±0.05 and “±”0.30 m w.e.
L374. “These comparisons may be affected by the loss of spatial representativeness of some glaciers (e.g. Careser in the Italian Alps and Sarennes in the French Alps)”. What references support this statement for these two glaciers? Does it come from Huss et al., 2015?
L417. Minus sign before the 0.65 lapse rate.
L499. “Rapid geometric changes may also lead to a non-linear response of B a to atmospheric changes, at least for some glaciers”. I also miss a reference here. Maybe (Elsberg et al., 2001) ? Or a more recent reference.
Elsberg, D. H., Harrison, W. D., Echelmeyer, K. A. and Krimmel, R. M.: Quantifying the effects of climate and surface change on glacier mass balance, J. Glaciol., 47(159), 649–658, 2001.
L576. E. Thibert agreed to have his email reveal to the authors.

Final comments by referee 2 (Emmanuel Thibert)
From my opinion, the paper can be now accepted after minor changes:
Line 160 : I suggest to add « …because of their southern locations in the Alps, of the differences in glacier… »
Line 172 : « …glaciological method… »
Line 220 : here and elsewhere in the text, I would not use the shortening vs. but versus.
Line 268/294. I missed where Table 2 is introduced in the text. I suggest this to be done in lines 268 or 294.
Line 285-290. I would specify here which NAO data series is used rather than in line 439.
Line 298 ; Change points are visible in Figure 4 which could be introduced here.
Line 414 : Specify « the June-September warming… » ?
Line 445 : « …season, with a higher link than the NAO signal. »
Line 480 ; especially in early and late winter in the accumulation period.
Line 507 : to conclude this paragraph, the authors could suggest to analyse in a further work point balances at a single stake trying to quantify/overcome the geometry feedback held in the glacier-wide mass balance series.
Line 515 : add « of » between higher-reaching and La Mare.
Line 516 : « area » instead of « eareal »
Line 526-532 : also should be investigated the common the year-to-year deviations of the mass balances between new and glaciers to be replaced
Line 540 : I would specify «…related feedbacks, such as the lengthening of the ablation season ».
Line 576 « Etienne Berthier »
Table 1 , head line, 4th column, inverse the bracket after m a.s.l.
Table 2. “standard deviation” (no shortening SD).
In captions of Tables 3, 4 and 5, I would write “…indicate significant Spearman correlation coefficients at the…”
An alternative to one-triple stars is to used italic, underline and bold face values in Table 3 to 6.
E. Thibert, 29/02/2016