Dear authors,

Thank you for submitting your detailed responses to the reviewers’ comments. I am satisfied with your responses as well as the revisions planned. Now, I would like to ask you to submit a revised version of the manuscript, highlighting the changes made, together with the full responses to the review comments.

Sincerely,
Associate Editor, The Cryosphere
Masashi Niwano

Dear authors,

I have received two review reports and am pleased to report that both referees are happy with your responses to their earlier concerns.

Although I have judged that the manuscript is almost ready for publication now, I agree with the anonymous referee #1 that there are still minor issues that should be addressed. Please consider these comments and update the manuscript.

Regarding the third comment from the anonymous referee #1, all you have to do is to revise the second part of Eq. (13) as follows:
\epsilon_{cloudy} = \epsilon_{a} “+” (1 - CC) \Delta \epsilon.

In addition to the points raised by the anonymous referee #1, I would like to suggest that the title of Sect. 6 “Conclusion” is not appropriate, because this section contains much information including many references. To me, some of them are not “conclusion” of this study. Therefore, I strongly recommend that you change the title of this section to something like “Summary and conclusions”. However, if you wish to keep the title of this section as is, I recommend that you move the part of “the information on computational speed” (P. 28, L. 6 ~ 12 in the author track change file), which is not a conclusion of this study obviously, to the end of Sect. 2.1 “General concept”. The discussion on the microbial activity (P. 30, L. 9 ~ 10) should also be moved to an appropriate place.

I’m looking forward to receiving your updated manuscript.

Sincerely,
Associate Editor, The Cryosphere
Dr. Masashi Niwano

Dear authors,

Thank you for submitting the revised manuscript. I have judged that the revisions are entirely appropriate, and the overall quality of the revised manuscript is excellent. Therefore, I am pleased to accept the paper as is. Thank you very much again for submitting the paper to the journal The Cryosphere.

Sincerely,
Associate Editor, The Cryosphere
Dr. Masashi Niwano