Dear authors.

Thank you for your submission on a refined image-processing algorithm and its
application to Operation IceBridge (OIB) Digital Mapping System (DMS) optical
images for the Arctic. This work presents a valuable improvement to the existing
dataset, especially with view of harvesting crucial information on Arctic meltponds.
I note, however, that such work needs to be conducted rigorously and complete. As
outlined by both reviewers and the public comment, your original submission showed
some shortcomings with regard to those. In the meantime your responses to the three
submitted comments indicates that a fully revised manuscript is likely within scope
for publication in TC.

I invite you iterate on the comments the reviewers and public, together the points
noted below, in order to submit your revised manuscript (ms).

General comments:

* The original submission is rather qualitative and at times handwaving. To improve
the ms, pls provide quantitative information: For example, what percentage of imagery
is not processed due to being cloud affected (l112); or "what is a large number" (l118).

* Provide physical motivation for the choice of your tresholds: 15m (l148), 27.5m (l152).

* Be clearer in how you compute if underlying sea ice is First Year [FY} or Multi Year
[MY] ice. I.e., what are your criteria to determine FY vs M Y (l214)?

* The discussion section needs to better reflect the results/findings from this work/
these data and be strengthened overall. In its current form the ms leans towards a
data-announcement paper (i.e., suitable for Earth System Science Data)... I recommend
strongly that this ms be extended to cover suffcient scientific application and results.

Specific comments:
l76: Your categorisation into freezing and melting occurrences of OIB's DMS imagery
appears rather crude, especially considering the range of locations observed. Pls
justify or refine this approach.

l143: Training datasets at https://github.com/wrightni/ossp:
These are shown to be from 2018 (V2): Are these the correct and up-to-date datasets
relating to this late 2019-submitted ms??

l176: Provide URL/link for the data processed for this ms at the NSIDC WWW pages.

l250: Correct "Lincoln sea" to "Lincoln Sea".

l268: There is a subsection "4.1" but no further subsection in 4: Remove by joining
the 4.1 subsection title with the "4" section title.

Editor's comments on revised TC-2019-288:

I thank the authors for their careful consideration of the comments of the reviewers and congratulate them on a much improved revised manuscript.

Pls carry out the following technical corrections in your next version to be submitted to TC.


l20: Change "We hope to demonstrate the power of this new dataset and to encourage future collaborative efforts to utilize the OIB data to explore the behavior of melt pond formation Arctic sea ice." to read "The derived OIB data presented here will be key to explore the behaviour of melt pond formation Arctic sea ice."
l28: Correct "In-situ" to "In situ" (in italics).
l86: Correct "Chukchi and Beaufort Seas." to use lower case seas: "Chukchi and Beaufort seas."
l103: To be more precise at "Boreal" to read "Boreal spring flights".
l105: Change "during melt" to "during the northern melt".
l272: Reverse order "July 19, 2016 and July 13, 2016." to be chronological.
l277: Change "scales (i.e. individual floes)" to "scales, i.e., individual floes".
l296: Consider to substitute "reinforces" with "reiterates".
l304: Suggest to rephrase "So few people actually observe the sea ice that notions of what is ‘typical’ or unusual are still not well known."
l316: Correct "Chukchi sea" to "Chukchi Sea".
l343: Change "our dataset" to read "our OIB-derived dataset".
l350: Define "MPF" on first use. - Or spell out here and for other two uses in this text... as done throughout most of your ms.
l354: Correct "(e.g." to "(e.g.,".
l382: Change "Examples of each behavior are included in Fig. 8." to "Examples of each behaviour have been identified "Fig. 8)."
l384: Correct "(e.g." to "(e.g.,".
l390: Correct "(such as 10b,g,h)." to "(such as Fig. 10b,g,h)."
l394: Change "basin wide scales" to "basin-wide scales".
l399: Change "created" to "derived".
l401: Change "In freezing conditions," to "For freezing conditions,".
l403: Change "and opens the door for new studies" to "and will support follow-on studies".
l417: Change "studies investigate" to "studies to investigate".
l419: Change "The different trajectories" to "The different evolution pathways".
l434: Should this be removed "designing and testing the OSSP software" as OSSP has been published previously, hence the software had already been in existence?
l444: I encourage you to acknowledge the comments of the two (anonymous) reviewers plus those from
the open discussion, as especially the former have contributed greatly to an improved revised version of this ms.
l458 & 460: "Eicken et al. (2004a)" and "Eicken et al. (2004b)" are identical. --> Fix and correct throughout ms.
l462 & 464: "Fetterer and Untersteiner (1998a)" and "Fetterer and Untersteiner (1998b)" are identical. --> Fix and correct throughout ms.
l478: Pls check correctness of "J. Geophys. Res. Ocean." rather than "J. Geophys. Res. Oceans".
l485: Correct "39(8), n/a-n/a" to "39, L08501".
l488: Pls check correctness of "J. Geophys. Res. Ocean." rather than "J. Geophys. Res. Oceans".
l490 & 492: "Perovich (2002a)" and "Perovich (2002b)" are identical. --> Fix and correct throughout ms.
l493: Add "Oceans" (or "Ocean.") after "J. Geophys. Res.".
l495: Pls check correctness of "J. Geophys. Res. Ocean." rather than "J. Geophys. Res. Oceans".
l495: Correct "117(C1), n/a-n/a" to "117, C01001".
l502: Pls check correctness of "J. Geophys. Res. Ocean." rather than "J. Geophys. Res. Oceans".
l506: Correct "Cryosphere" to "The Cryosphere".
l522: Pls check correctness of "J. Geophys. Res. Ocean." rather than "J. Geophys. Res. Oceans".
l527: Correct "Cryosphere" to "The Cryosphere".
l541: Include date on which this image was taken.
l564: Correct "25 km2" to upper case, i.e., "25 km^2".
l566: Add year to read "July 13 2016".
l567: Add year to read "July 19 2016".
Figs 7 & 8: Show uniform tickmarks and labels of y-axis for both figures.
Fig9: Should the 3 subfigures here not be labelled "d", "e" and "f" and referred to as such in the caption?
l578: Change "image resolution" to "image resolution and footprint".

With kind regards, Petra