Dear authors
Many thanks for your replies to the referees' comments. In view of the referees' reports and the intended revisions described in your responses, you are invited to submit a suitably revised manuscript. The revised manuscript will be sent to referees for assessment, before reaching a final decision regarding publication of your paper.
I look forward to your revised paper.
Best regards,
Jürg Schweizer.

Dear authors
Please consider the comments by Referee #2 below. After you have addressed those comments and submitted a new revised version I will take the final decision.
Best regards,
Jürg.

Report by Referee#2

The authors improved the manuscript considerably and took all comments into consideration. We think that the manuscript can be accepted after taking some minor issues, that we point out below, into consideration. Page and line numbers refer to the track-changed version in "tc-2020-14-author_response-version2.pdf"

Introduction L14-19: This section needs some more additional information. It states that new snow density is validated with field measurements (L15), but that field measurements show that the model underestimates snow density (L16-17). So probably it needs to be made more precise how the field measurements differ, or if it's a difference in definition of new/surface snow density.

P3, L16: "joint venture of" to "joint venture between"

P5, L1/2: Are both of these values air or firn temperatures?

P5, L4: Please specify the period over which the accumulation rate was determined ("used to be").

P10, L17: It's still somewhat challenging to fully comprehend the manuscript at this point. Please explicitly write down how you arrived at 7 as the maximum possible number with spatially independent samples. I assume it must have to do with the earlier declared independent distance of 5m (L12), and 30 profiles over 50m, as stated earlier.

P25, L29/30: "We can reduce the sampling error from up to ±4% (Conger and McClung, 2009) by the liner technique (this study and e.g. Schaller et al., 2016) to less than 2% relative error for a 1 m snow density." After revision, this sentence is now confusing, as it sounds like the liner technique has a +/- 4% error. I assume it should read something like: "by using the liner technique (this study and e.g. Schaller et al., 2016), we can reduce the sampling error from up to ±4% for other measurement techniques (Conger and McClung, 2009) to less than 2% relative error for a 1 m snow density."

Table 2: Change "Dez" to "Dec".

Equations 2 and 3: Do those correspond to 1 m density? Or new snow density? If they apply to new snow density, is this a fair analysis?

P22, L7: Is the resolution not 27 km? (see Ligtenberg et al, 2011)

Section 4.6: This section is still not very clear. I think this section should either be dropped completely or a detailed description (equations and all logic explicitly written out) should be added. The authors write: “As the firn-ice-transition is not as deep at the coast as on the EAP, we consider this calculation to be somewhat overestimated.” But it is not shown in the paper that the same surface density bias exists at the coast. In the second to last sentence in the conclusion, it is not clear to which mass "mass" (P26,L33) is referring to. Is it "surface mass balance"?

Dear authors
Many thanks for your final corrections. I am pleased to accept your mansucript for publication.
Best regards,
Juerg Schweizer.