Dear Authors

Thank you for your detailed responses to the reviewers' constructive comments. I am really happy to read that you have included MERRA2 and ERA5 in your analysis. I look forward to reading your revised version. Even though I am satisfied with your responses, I will most likely send your paper for further review because your topic is not within my core expertise and your changes are fairly extensive, as recommended by some reviewers.

Best regards

Florent Domine

Dear Authors,

Thanks you for this extensively revised version. You did benefit from really many detailed and constructive comments, but I feel you have made the best use of them, to produce a much more appealing version of your work. Your inclusion of MERRA-2 and ERA5 probably required a significant amount of work, but I feel it was well worth the effort. This is much appreciated. I am therefore pleased to accept your paper for publication in The Cryosphere. I just wish to suggest that you consider including Figure S1 in the main text. If this is not possible, since this may come from one person external to your initial team, fine, but we are trying to minimize supplementary material that would logically fit in the paper, as seems the case here.

Thank you for submitting your work to The Cryosphere.

Best regards,

Florent Domine

Dear Authors,

I thank you for the change and am happy to accept your paper for publication in The Cryosphere, congratulations!

Thank you for submitting your work to The Cryosphere.

Best regards,

Florent Domine