Thank-you for your thorough responses to the reviewer comments, in particular considering the suggestions of Reviewer 2 to shift some content to the Supplementary Material. I note also your consideration of comments on the use of "representative” algorithms in some figures instead of the full suite of ten products. Please proceed with submission of the revised manuscript. Your contribution to The Cryosphere is appreciated.
Chris Derksen

Dear Stefan: Thanks very much for the revised manuscript. The concerns of the reviewers are now addressed and the paper is accepted for publication in The Cryosphere. When you submit the final version for page setting, I suggest you make the following very minor corrections:
-Line 532: the phrase “none of them is doing things quite right” reads colloquially. I suggest revising this text.
-Line 540: change to “Besides melt ponds, wet snow…”
-Line 704: change to “…quantity which by physical means is the one accessible…”
-Line 709: “longer and sustained melt-pond fraction datasets derived from satellite observations in the visible/near-infrared frequency range (MODIS, MERIS, OLCI, etc.).” Perhaps not just visible/NIR imagery, but radar as well: https://doi.org/10.1002/2017GL075547

This is a very thorough study which will be of broad interest to the sea ice remote sensing community. In particular, the suggestion to produce “net ice-surface fraction” retrievals will generate much needed thought and discussion.
Thanks for your submission to The Cryosphere.
Chris