Dear authors,

Thanks for submitting a revised version of your manuscript together with point-to-point responses. I reviewed these materials by myself and judged that your responses are satisfactory. I made some editorial notes below to enhance clarity of the manuscript. Please consider these points before you submit the final manuscript for the production.

I am happy to accept this manuscript subject to technical corrections.

Editorial points (line numbers refer those in the edit-tracked version submitted with the response letter)

P2L1: remove definition of SMB and spell it out in the abstract.

P3L21ff: SMB is defined a line above, but both SMB and surface mass balance are used throughout the manuscript. I think most (if not all) surface mass balance should be changed to SMB. At P4L3 SMB is defined again.

P4LL1-2: Here it is said that control experiments are ran for boundary forcing that are time invariable and equal to the end of initial experiments. However, Fig. 6b shows that some experiments show time variable surface mass balance. Are these models that assume PDD for SMB? Please clarify the settings of the control experiments.

P4L18: “…. And averaged over ice shelves in each of the 20 ice-sheet basins defined….”

P11L1ff: sometimes it is very confusing what “average”, “mean”, “change” and “stable” mean. Is it average in the basin, or average between models? Consider rephrasing “basin averaged”, “model “averaged" or such. Some “changes” can be changed to “variations” or “differences” if they refer differences between models rather than temporal changes. It is more understandable if “stable” is replaced with “spatially uniform” (P14L16).

P23L17: “ice shelf basal melting”

P25L1: I think this appendix describes not only model initializations but models more generally.

P35: The purpose of this paper is to examine impacts of differential treatments in model initializations. So I understand that sea level change is used as a unit to show ice volume. I think this appendix/table is useful to see diversified results between models, but the Appendix title should be changed appropriately. Also, please clarify that negative means lowering.

Figure 1 caption: Is it better to say “calving front” or “ice extent” rather than “ice sheet extent”? White outline of individual ice basins might be helpful to distinguish some basins shown with very similar colors.

Table C1: units for SMB and basal melt are Gt/a, not Gt, I think.

Kenny Matsuoka
TC/TCD Editor