Dear Ruiqi Jiang and co-authors,

Your manuscript has now been reviewed by two referees, and you have responded to their comments in a satisfactory manner. Based on the referees comments and evaluations I have decided that your manuscript needs revisions based on the referees comments before publication in TC. Please carefully take into account the comments from the referees when revising your manuscript, and take special care to clarify the comments on porosity, soil saturation, and how to relate the estimated hydraulic conductivity values for the frozen samples (for glycol solution) to those of unfrozen samples (for water).

I am sorry that the review process took a long time, which was due to one referee not providing their review in time.

I look forward to seeing your revised manuscript.

Best regards,
Ylva Sjöberg

Dear Ruiqi Jiang and co-authors,

Thank you for submitting a revised version of your manuscript and replying to the reviewers’ comments. I have decided that the manuscript can be accepted after minor revisions, reviewed by the editor.

You have responded to the reviewers’ comments, but several of the comments have not resulted in any clarifications in the text. Clarifying the text at the passages the reviewers have commented on would greatly improve the readability of your manuscript. I would therefore like to see some further revisions of your manuscript in response to the following comments:

Referee 1
Comment #4 and #6 – please clarify how this was done.
Comment #5
Comment # 10
Comment #13 This really needs to be more clearly stated. For example, Table 3 lists physical properties for 3 liquids at different temperatures, but I cannot find that it is stated in the text which of the liquids are used in the experiments. Are there actually three different liquids used? If so, why?
Comment #16 – So, how is your model complementary to the methods and studies listed by the referee?
Comment #18 Here you refer to a frozen hydraulic conductivity of 1e-10 m/s for frozen soils, calculated in your present study. I cannot find where in the results this is shown. Please make sure to add reference to where in the results this can be found. In this discussion, it should be relevant to note that you have used different liquids for the different temperatures and that part of the difference in Ksat with temperature is due to different viscosities of liquids.

Referee 2
Comment #1 As you visualize and discuss how freezing controls hydraulic conductivity it seems very important to clearly show the impact from using the different liquids for different temperatures. Adding permeability values to Table 6 would be very helpful for understanding the potential impact of freezing on the movement of water in soils.
Using the values in Table 3 together with the Ksat for black soil at 15C and -10 C from Table 6, I tested to convert from Ksat to permeability:
Water at 15C, Ksat = 1.43e-5 m/s (5.15 cm/h), permeability = 1.80e-9 m2
Aq. Sol. At -10C, Ksat = 1.45e-6 m/s (0.52 cm/h), permeability = 1.35e-9 m2
The change in permeability associated with the freezing is then relatively minor. This also points back to comment #18 from referee 1.
Comment #12 clarify in text.
Comment #13 respond to the comment about uncertainty.

Please make sure to carefully address all these comments before submitting a revised version of your manuscript.

Best regards,
Ylva Sjöberg
Associate Editor, TC

Dear Ruiqi Jiang and co-authors,

Thank you for the final revisions of your manuscript and for your patience with any delays in the handling of your manuscript. At this point, I am happy to tell you that I find your manuscript ready for publication.

Best regards,
Ylva Sjöberg