Dear Mr. Tielidze,

Thank you for your revised mansucript.
However, I am missing a detailed reply to the comments. You provided a reply in the discussion. However, this includes partly statements like "I will...".
Please provide a point to point reply where you clearly state what you have finally done and do not leave the work to check the reviewer and editor. This will also facilita and usually speed up the review process.

Thank you and best regards,

Tobias Bolch

Dear Levan Tielidze,

I have received the reviews for your revised manuscript and carefully read the manuscript by myself. As also mentioned by the reviewers, the manuscript has improved, but there are still several issues which must be addressed before it is acceptable for The Cryosphere.
I agree with the reviewers comments (except one, see below) but have also some more comments from my side which I ask you to carefully consider.

The most important issues are:
- As already mentioned in my access review: The methodology must “be described more in detail including an assessment of the uncertainty. The link to the climate data should be improved.” You are addressing glacier area changes. These changes show, in contrast to mass balance measurements, a delayed signal to climate and hence, you should not relate the same periods to each other. Looking only at temperature is not enough. Include also precipitation analysis. Are the climate data checked for homogenization? (e.g. trends due to changes of instrumentation, outliers).
- As also already mentioned in my access review: “the current scientific knowledge should be better acknowledged and discussed with respect to the own results”. It has improved but not enough.
- In addition: “The difference to your own published papers (even if not peer reviewed) must clearly be shown and figures and numbers shown there properly acknowledged and cited.” There is another paper published: Tielidze, L. et al. (2015): Glaciers Amount and Extent Change in the Dolra River Basin in 1911-1960-2014 Years, Caucasus Mountains, Georgia Observed with Old Topographical Maps and Landsat Satellite Imagery American Journal of Climate Change, 4, 217-225. The results of these papers must be properly acknowledged. I have I already clearly asked you to do so.
- I do not agree to simply omit the information about the Soviet glacier inventory. This data was frequently used. Provide more information (e.g. comparisons (e.g. quantify the differences between Dr. Gobejishvili’s data) about the quality and then provide a clear rational to omit.
- There are several statements, especially in the introduction which must be underlined by references, e.g. L. 47, 55, 56 (but not only there).
- I am aware that you are not a native speaker. The English must be perfect, but there are many mistakes and awkward phrases.

More specific comments are provided below:
L. 16. Omit “great”. This is a scientific article.
L. 29, 31 and later. Substitute “our “us” or “we” by the singular form. You are the only author.
L. 40: I do not agree. The clear and significant warming started later. Be more specific and provide a reference.
L.45: This is also too general.
L. 60-63. Bo more specific and provide more details. Include also the information about the Caucasus glaciers in GLIMS and RGI.
L. 77: Radici et al. 2014. Wrong reference. They used the RGI data according to my knowledge. Please be more specific and include the RGI version for this coverage.
L. 86: Reference missing in the list.
L. 106: Your dissertation is hardly accessible and most of the readers will not understand Georgian. I am sure this is not the only source this statement. Please include additional references here and later with your dissertation.
L. 134: “quite precise” Be more specific.
L. 139: Provide proper reference to the Soviet Glacier Inventory.
L. 148ff: Accuracy of the registration?
L. 166: “minimum error” “at the very end”, be more precise.
Which processing level of Landsat and Aster did you use? L1T? Also ASTER data?
L. 188: Why did you co-register the L1T images. These should already been properly co-registred.
L. 196/198: How did you obtain these numbers?
L .230: How did you derive these uncertainties? I especially do not understand the uncertainty for the numbers.
Section “4.2 Climate variability”: Avoid repetitions. More the information about the stations and data used to the Data section and concentrate here on the main trends.
L. 409-414: Move the info about the significance test and ow you performed it to the methods section as asked by one reviewer, but mention the results of the tests in the results section along with the respective stations and periods.
5. Discussion: As mentioned above: The discussion must be clearly improved. Provide more information about how your results relate to published ones for Caucasus and, maybe, also Eurasia.
L. 426: “higher risk of disappearance” I do not agree. The results are statistically hardly different. Moreover “Risk” is not the proper term here.
L. 441ff: Here, you mention that you question the quality of the 1911 data. It is good to discuss. But be more quantitative and provide then better argumentation why you keep the 1911 data.
6. Conclusions
You should not provide new results in the conclusions but draw the main conclusions form the study (glacier changes and rates, reliability of source data, remaining knowledge gaps etc.). Move 480ff to the results section. Was the map of 1887 mentioned before?

Figures 2, 3, and 8 are not needed. Include the information into Table 1 and include the uncertainty in this table.
Figs 5-8 are also not very good. You may show one representative climate diagram (with precipitation) and the temperature and precipitation changes in a table.
Fig. 10 is nice. I suggest to include an additional figure showing the glacier changes instead. This is most important to know about the quality of the data..

Additional remarks:
I am aware that this is your first real peer reviewed paper and I am therefore supportive that this manuscript can be published in The Cryosphere. I decided for minor revision (although there are still major ones which you should address) so that I can make the decision and do not need to send it out to the reviewers again. In turn, address this time ALL comments carefully. Some of my earlier comments and some of the reviewers comments were not addressed adequately which makes the review and the editorial works quite time intensive. I will not accept this anymore in this revision. In case needed, I will consult an addtional referee. Put also more efforts in the style and the language. I am sure Roger Wheate will help you in this regard.

Do not hesitate to ask in case you have any question. I am looking forward to your resubmission.

Best regards,

Tobias Bolch
Editor TC

Dear Levan Tielidze,

Thank you for the efforts to improve the manuscript. It has clearly improved, but there are still some remaining issues which must be addressed before it is acceptable for The Cryosphere.

General comments:
- You must provide more information about possible inhomogeneity in the climate data. I do not meant extreme values but outliers due to wrong notes or trends due to changes of instrumentation etc.. Please see e.g., Begert, M., Schlegel, T., & Kirchhofer, W. (2005). Homogeneous Temperature and Precipitation Series of Switzerland from 1864 to 2000. International Journal of Climatology, 25, 65–80. I am aware that you likely cannot avoid adjust some inhomogeneities, but you must as least do the best you can and mention is drawbacks in the manuscript, similar you wrote in the reply but be more quantitative (what does “don not significantly affect the trend” mean). Include this info in 3.4.
- Use only one decimal digit instead of two when presenting numbers (e.g. 36.9 ±2.2 instead of 36.88±2.16).
- Provide more information about the glaciers (esp. ELA) either in the section about the study region (in general form) and at the beginning of the results section (when analysing the own data see below).
- It would be good if you would include more results of the inventory since it is the first recent one for entire Georgia, e.g. clearly state the current glacierized area in Georgia, more topographic information (min, max elevation, aspect, mean elevation). Is there any trend of the ELA/mean elevation present which can e.g. be related to climate (e.g. continentality etc.)? This is not much work but will clearly increase the impact of your paper. Just a suggestion, feel free to consider or not.
- The discussion is still the weakest part. Do not present new results but put your results into perspective. Discuss e.g. better the observed temperature trends with respect to the literature. 0.2° warming in 100 years seems to be quite low. The first two statements (L. 398-404) must be better underlined by data. There are also regions where smaller cirque glaciers were quite stable due to specific topographic locations (e.g. there is one publication about the small glaciers in the Canadian Rockies). The info about the uncertainty of the 1911 data should be presented in the data section and the effect on the data a bit more detailed in the discussion.
- The conclusions are still weak and too general. You have much more conclusions you can draw (regional differences, suitability of the maps). I do not really like the separation in countries. Climate and glaciers do not know countries. Aren’t there south facing glaciers in the Russian territory and vice versa? Are there also differences in glacier size? The last two sentences should either be discussed before and underlined with relevant literature or omitted.


More specific comments:
L. 55-59: Good that you mention now GLIMS and RGI. However, you need to be more specific about the source of the data for this region (see RGI technical reports, and GLIMS metadata and include the RGI version(s) (as already requested)..
L. 148: Include the reference for the original inventory, not only Khomova et al. 2014.
L. 206: Provide a rational for the 7.5m. You may mention in this section the general uncertainty of glacier outlines of maps. You approach is valid but more theoretical.
L. 224: Why only data from the accumulation season? Maybe there is also some summer snowfall. But it is better to use only the accumulation season than the annual data and do not separate the seasons.
L434ff: Good that you include now comparisons to some other studies. This should slightly be extended.
L. 439: You do not need to refer to my own study about Northern Tien Shan. It is specific and my numbers are probably too high due to some errors in the data from the soviet glacier inventory. You may keep as I used this inventory but the uncertainty should be mentioned. I think it is better to quote Sorg et al. (2012), Nat. Clim. Change when you want to refer to the Tien Shan.
Fig. 5: Include the info about the black line in the figure.
Fig. 6: The horizontal lines are a bit confusing as you show above the trends with solid lines, I would omit as the differences can also be seen without the line.

Do not hesitate to ask in case you have any question. I am looking forward to your resubmission.

Best regards,

Tobias Bolch
Editor TC

Dear Levan Tielidze,

Thank you for the efforts to further improve the manuscript. I am happy to accept the manuscript after few minor technical corrections:

Most important is that the comparison to RGI and GLIMS should be at least a bit more quantitative:
L. 475 – 481: Be a bit more specific and quantitative with the comparison to RGI. What does “many errors” mean? I am pretty sure that your data is more accurate, but it is also not error-free.

A suggestion for he section “study area”: Start with the sentence “The Greater Caucasus mountain range extends along the northern territory of Georgia for about 750 km.”

Some improvements are also needed for the references:
Assure that all references are formatted according to the Copernicus style.

L. 64/ 596: “GLIMS Technical Report”: The correct citation is:
L. 607: correct Stoffe, M. to Stoffel, M.
L. 647: Write consistently (in Russian) or (in Georgian) before the publication year
L. 598 and 655: Include also the transliteration of the Russian as you did for L. 645. Is any transliteration of Georgian to Latin letters existing?
L. 667: Is this book written in English, if not include (in Georgian)?

Thank you very much for your contribution to The Cryosphere. I am looking forward to the publication of your manuscript.
Do not hesitate to ask in case you have any question.

Best regards,

Tobias Bolch
Editor TC