The revised manuscript addressed reviewers’ concerns adequately and is much stronger than the original version. Below, I provide a few specific comments to improve this manuscript further. Because all of them are minor, I am happy to accept this manuscript subject to tehcnical corrections. If the authors intend to revise the manuscirpt more substantially or in a different way from the guidance below, please contact me prior to the submission of the final manuscript.

- The 6-dB criterion used in this manuscript is supported by the phase diagram presented in Fig. 5. The authors show that this criterion satisfies (and is slightly stricter than) a classical criterion of the 10-dB reflectivity contrast in most cases. They also emphasize that the map shown in this study is a conservative estimate. In this sense, the paper is complete. However, ideally speaking, it is better if the sensitivity of geographical distribution of thawed bed is discussed for slightly different criteria. If the authors used slightly different criteria (e.g. variability > 5 dB) in their initial work and get similar spatial patterns, please mention it in this manuscript. If such results are not available, please ignore this comment.

- Please reconsider to call “large” bed echoes as “good quality” bed echoes. I understand authors’ intention to use a non-technical term but smaller bed echoes can reflect just the nature of the dry bed and can be in a good quality. I think that “bed echoes with high signal-to-noise ratio (S/N)” is a clearer way to call it, and it should be defined in such a way at least first time it appears.

- slush “/” is over-used in my opinion. In many cases, they can be replaced with “and”, which makes sentences clearer.

- L204-209: Spatial resolution of GISM can be mentioned earlier, at the line 204 (in the marked manuscript). The modelled ice thickness is different from the observed thickness so that the vertical variation of ice temperature is normalized to the modeled ice thickness, and then re-scaled to the observed ice thickness, I think. Statements at lines 206-208 are unclear for me, because it mentioned both this vertical scaling and probably the horizontal resolution adjustments between the 5-km-resolution model and 1-km-resolution DEM.

- L203: these -> those?

- L391: You said “initial results” at L369 and that only green and red data are analyzed further in Fig. 6 caption. Please mention this point in the main text as well for completeness.

- L396: original paper? Replace with the full reference.

- L469-470: incomplete sentence?

- L515: spelling (space), f”_”ast.

- L593: remove “the”.

- L598 – L604: so what’s your point?

- Fig. 1C: deep ice core sites are shown in blue in this figure but in yellow in Figs. 6-10. It is better if you show the core sites all in yellow.

- Figure 2a second panel from the top: the threshold red bar is displayed for sigma_R = 10 dB, not 6 dB.

Thank you for submitting the valuable work to The Cryosphere.

Kenny Matsuoka
TC/TCD Editor