Dear S. Berger,
After a positive but critical re-review by one the initial referees, the authors undertook substantial revisions (new/changed figures, text, structure) and addressed the raised issues of the referee very well and carefully which has also been confirmed by a re-review. There remain a few minor and rather technical issues/comments as listed by the re-review and myself as the editor and which should be addressed before final publication. Thus, I am pleased to announced that after these revisions the paper is accepted for publication in TC. At this stage I would also like to thank the authors for their excellent handling of revisions.
Best regards

Andreas Vieli, the editor, 7th Oct 2017


Re-review of revised version
This paper has been substantially revised and improved, and the authors have carefully addressed all my comments and questions in the first review. Reading through the annotated version of the revised manuscript, I only have a few minor comments and suggestions for edits that should be easy to implement:

Note of editor: I adjusted page and line number below to the final revised version (not the track change version).

P1, L9: “…and should be”

P2, L14: delete “ virtually always” (you already talk about the case of basal channels)

P3, L13: “based on one”

P4, L1: I would add something like “…in areas with rough surface where…” because it’s the combination of topography and movement that counts, not just the latter.

P6, L13/14: As I see it, the most relevant aspects of such time statistics are the internal consistency of the two annual DEMs and then their time separation for deriving thickness changes. Hence, I would rather state something like: “… the DEMs cover time spans of Jun.-Oct. 2013 and Jun.-Jul. 2014 (Fig. S1), with time separations ranging from XX to YY days in areas where thickness rates where calculated between the two years.”

P6, L17: “assume to be”

P6, L18: “these small shifts”

P7, L15: “As the Lagrangian framework moves…” (I think you only describe one framework in the paper, so plural form here would just be confusing)

P10, L10/11: Good, but to make this number comparable for other studies, I would mention the surface area considered (XX km2) or only the area-averaged rate (XX m a-1).

P11, L19: Fig. 5b, not 5c.

P13, L3: The section title of 3.2 is not consistent with 3.1. Either mention Basal mass balance here also or remove it from 3.1.

Fig. 5: A nice new figure that clearly illustrates my point in the review. Thanks!

P20, L15: This section header is confusingly similar to 3.1/3.2 and breaks with the simplistic style of previous main sections (Introduction, Data and Methods, Results, etc.). Without restructuring, I think it’s best to simply call this one Discussion and the previous one Error Sources (it is already clear from the paper title that BMB is the main focus).

P21, L28: This short statement about basal channels is too general considering that most channels advect passively. Mention that here also, or at least specify something like “…a few occurences of large…” or “…some sections of ice-shelf channels”.

P22, Table 1: This data table belongs in Section 2.

Appendix, P1: “…satellite paths that have been...”


Additional minor rather technical comments/corrections (line numbers refer to revised version) from editor

P 1. Title: are the brackets around RBIS, Antarctica really necessary? Seems rather unusual to have brackets in a title
p. 1 line 11: add a ‚the’ before ‚pressure melting point’
p. 1. Line 13: 0.7x30km2 ‚wide’ is awkward as it refers to an area or extent and not a width; maybe replace ‚wide’ with ‚extent’.
p. 2 line 14: do you really mean ‘virtually’, I do not quite know what you want to say with it. Maybe just delete it.
p. 2 line 13: style, maybe replace ‚but’ with ‚and’ as ‚on the other hand’ already emphasizes a ‚contrast’.
p. 2 line 30: style: i do not think you can ‚smear out’ a ‚process’ but rather the ‚morphological imprint of a process is smeared out’.
p. 3 Fig. 1, line 1 in caption: add ‚(grey shading)’ after ‚topography’.
p. 6 line 13: i guess this should all be in ‚plural’: ‚We attribute these small shifts to...in barometric effects…’
p. 7 line 23: ‘…maximal.’ or ‘..at its maximum.’
p. 8 line 3: ‘This ISSUE can be accounted for…’
p. 13 Fig 6: now it does not actually say what quantiy is shown in Fig 6 (e.g. to what the colors refer to). Maybe say: ‘LBMB around an ice-shelf channel…’
p. 18 Fig 9 in caption: it should be specified in caption to what the RED and Black lines in Fig. 9a-b refer to.
p. 20 line 25: style: maybe ‘observed’ or ‘obtained’ is more appropriate than ‘shown’
p.21 line 3: typo: subglacial (not sublglacial)
P. 21 line 18: delete comma after ‘which’.
p. 21 line 18: ‘…ice-flow with ocean models…’
p. 21 line 19-21: style: awkward and long formulation, maybe simplify to: ‘…highly resolved ocean models and community efforts such as the MISOMIP are typically gridded at 1-2km resolution.’"