Dear authors

The revised manuscript satisfactory addressed most of reviewer’s concerns, but not all (see list below). Therefore, I request a minor revision and will review the next manuscript by myself.

I would like to remind the authors to strictly follow the guidance provided at the journal web site. Authors are supposed to provide point-to-point responses and a marked manuscript.

The author's response (also final author comment in the public discussion) in case of "minor" or "major" revisions must be submitted as one separate *.pdf file (indicating page and line numbers), structured in a clear and easy-to-follow sequence: (1) comments from referees/public, (2) author's response, and (3) author's changes in manuscript. Regarding author's changes, a marked-up manuscript version (track changes in Word, latexdiff in LaTeX) converted into *.pdf including the author's response must be provided.

Authors’ responses to the following points are unsatisfactory.

Reviewer #1’s comments (Howard Conway) on (1) R(t), (2) #3-ii (locations of NP and LDCP), and (3) #3-iii (Figs 3 and 4). For (3), please see my comment below.

Reviewer #2’s comments (Ralf Greve) on (1) Equation 1 (neglecting lateral flow) and (2) Clausius-Clapeyron constant.

Additional comments from the editor

L131: Clarify whether co-variance of surface accumulation and basal melting is an assumption or not. Are there any arguments to support this assumption? This is the point brought by the reviewer #1 and I think that the authors did not respond to this comment.

L151: Is U_z defined?

L196: New Figure 4 shows height of the 1.5Ma isochrone, not the age at 150 m above bed.

L209-211: The text mentions the age of ice 150 m above the bed, which is no longer presented in Fig. 4.

L229: Does “the ridge” refer the “Concordia Ridge”? Clarify please.

L231-232: Do the radar data show any of accretion features there?

L236-239: Authors noted that geothermal flux estimates are less reliable when the bed is not melting. Then, does it make more sense to show the estimated geothermal flux in Fig. 5 only when the bed is melting?

L256: Is this LDC or LDCP?

L260: do you mean “Using the shape of the isochorones”?

Figure 1: label LDC and NP in the figure. These labels were included in the first manuscript but not in the revised manuscript.

Figure 1 caption: “radar transect”, not lines.

Figure 2 caption: Is it better to say “Proportionality factor R(t) applied to accumulation and melting rates (see Eq. 2).” ?

Figure 3: Mention in the caption or label in the figure that the black curve represents the bed. NP and LDCP are not sites but more like small regions (if I understand correctly). The caption should be updated to clarify this point. The current caption can be read that LDCP and NP are sites exactly on the profile. Also please add a location of the EDC core site (vertical bar in the figure?). I suggest showing the locations of LDCP and NP as well using vertical bars.

Figure 3: Add several panels (line plots) above the age diagram to more clearly show some parameters shown in Figs. 4 and 5: (1) bottom age, (2) minimum bottom age, (3) height of 1.5Ma ice above the bed, (4) temporal resolution of 1.5Ma ice, and (5) inferred geothermal flux. I see that the authors revised Figs. 4 and 5 to respond reviewer’s comment. However, it is still hard to read these properties form the maps.

Figure 4 right bottom: The authors argue that the temporal resolution of 1.5Ma ice is about 10 ka/m, which is hard to read from the figure. Change the color scale.

Figure 5 right top: please revise the color scale. Now most values are shown with blue-ish color so the figure shows little information.

Figure 5 for geothermal flux: see my comment for line 236.

Kenny Matsuoka
TC/TCD Editor

Dear authors:

I am pleased to accept this manuscript with a technical correction on Fig. 3. Please adjust the horizontal scale of all panels, so that the line plots and radargram can be easily seen together.

Thanks for submitting your work to TCD/TC.

Kenny Matsuoka
Editor