Dear authors,

Thanks for your thorough revisions. Both reviewers judge that your revisions satisfactory address their concerns overall. The reviewer #1 recommended accepting the manuscript as is, whereas the reviewer #2 recommended a minor revision. Amongst the comments of the reviewer #2, I leave it to you whether a majority of Section 2.2 moves to Appendix or stays as is. I see the point brought by this reviewer, but also feel that a brief explanation on various length scales is useful for non-specialists.

Together with my own review, I request the authors to revise the manuscript one more time. My current plan is to evaluate the next version by myself without sending the manuscript to reviewers, so that the decision process should not take long time in the next round. When you submit the next version, please include a mark-up manuscript showing changes from this version and a response letter. Please quote major revisions (or show corresponding page/line numbers) in the letter.

P1L7: don’t define symbols of z_gl and alpha in the abstract and replace them at L1L9.

P1L12-14: Probably it is better to say “Our results qualitatively replicate some large-scale observed features in basal melt rates around Antarctica, not only in terms of average values but also in terms of the spatial pattern, with high melt rates typically occurring near the grounding line.” “Realistic map” doesn’t sound good for me.

P1L14: do you mean “The plume parameterization and the effective temperature field presented here…”?

P4L27, P4L32, and elsewhere: Change “ocean water” to “seawater” (or vice versa to keep it consistent throughout the paper).

P7L14-15: Small letter L is defined here as “a temperature- and geometry-dependent length scale”. However, if I understand correctly, it is referred as “the universal length scale l” at P8L23. Because many length scales are discussed in the section 2.2, it is confusing for me. When you define l at P7L14, can you also mention why it has a universal feature?

P7L15: add “l” after “length scale”

P7L28: I think that equation numbers “(9) and (8)” are incorrect. Maybe they are associated with LateX system bug but please double check equation numbers.

P8L9 and P8L13: “The” third and fourth lengths, instead of “a”?

P8L17: Equation number? Cited as (9)

P8L23: Equation number? Probably “in (7)”

P9L4: Revise “same” and “common”, as they are ambiguous. I think that the authors are trying to say “first rising to a peak at the scale distance X ~0.2, before falling and transitioning to freezing at x ~0.8. These locations are insensitive to ….”

P9L14: “In summary, the results of….”

P10L6: “The elevation of the upper ice surface Hs”. H is used for ice thickness and elevations, whereas z is defined as depth. And later, “d” is used to define grounding-line depth. It is confusing.

P10L6 and P10L10, subscript b is used to refer both bedrock and the lower surface of the ice shelf, which can be confusing. Also, “bedrock” is not accurate; seafloor is often covered with sediments, and I think that the authors want to refer “seafloor”, instead of “bedrock”.

P11L11: Define d_n, e.g. “… < zb(i,h), where d_n is the grounding-line depth.” Consider replacing d with z (or consistently use a symbol to refer all depths).

P11L12: no hyphen between depth and difference.

P13L8. Now you use “D” for the plume thickness. Again, please review all symbols used for depth, thickness, elevation etc so that readers will not be confused. Also, check subscript.

P13L10: It is unclear what Hattermann (2012) and Hattermann et al. (2014) say respectively.

P16L7: parametarization”s”, plural.

P18L2: revise. Probably “…. a suitable input of the ocean temperature field”

P18L10: Is the salinity correct? You say 34.6 here, but you used 34.65 for the 1D experiments (P15L11).

P18L17: ocean water -> seawater

P22L7: it is hard to see refreezing areas from Fig. 10 because these areas are patchy and small. Can you briefly describe where (which ice shelves) you found refreezing?

P22L12: positive melt -> melting.

P23L3: remove “important”

P24L2: do you think Rignot’s estimate of 100 m/a is accurate? I accept your general message here that models predict basal melt smaller than the observation but doubt validity of this extreme number.

P28L26: change to “DT between -0.5oC and 5.4oC is required…”

Table 1: third row in the constant parameters. The subscript should be “TS”, not “TS0”.

Table 2: Change “ocean water” to “seawater”

Table 3: explain BG2003 and DCP2016 references in the caption. Also, ocean water -> seawater.

Figure 2: Melting and refreezing parts of the curve are shown with arrows, which is confusing for me. It can be more accurately shown if the positive M domain and negative M domain are masked with different colors.

Figure 3: add “seafloor”, “ocean”, “ice” labels for clarifications.

Figs. 5 and 6: these figures and captions should be improved a lot, as it is difficult to read. How about “Geometry (a) and model results (b-d) for a flow line along the Ronne-Filchner Ice Shelf. (a) Geometry. (b) Melt rates along the flow line when DT = 0 oC. (c) same as (b) but for DT = 0.8oC. (c) Melt rates averaged along the flow line as a function of DT. See Fig. 7 for flowline locations.” Accordingly, change the order of panels. Change the x label for the current panels a and b to “Distance from the grounding line (km)”. Two curves are virtually identical especially for Fig. 5; can you mention this in the caption so that readers do not need to seek for the black curve in panel a which is below the green curve? Why different color sets are used for panel d? It is most convenient if all panels show the results using the same color set. In Fig. 6 caption, please mention that the vertical axis is about one tenth of Fig. 5. For the geometry panel, label ice, ocean, and seafloor.

Please consider combining these two figures into one two-column figure, showing panels a-d for each ice shelf in a column, because geometry is a major factor to determine the peak positions as discussed in the paper, and to see this feature it is more convenient if all figures are aligned vertically.

Fig. 7: is the box 2-3 boundary located correctly? Sigma -> standard deviation. I think that this figure is the best place to show 1D flowline for RF and Ross.

Fig. 9: Sigma -> standard deviation

Fig. 11: remove “on important areas.” so that the caption is read “… and zoomed in (a) …, (b) …., and (c)….” Also, consider showing ice sheet/shelf or ocean masks to clarify the location of the grounding line and the calving front.

Dear authors,

The authors addressed the issues brought by the editor and reviewer satisfactory. I'm happy to accept this manuscript as is. Great work, and thank you for submitting your work to TC/TCD.

Kenny Matsuoka
TC/TCD editor.