Dear authors,

many thanks for clarifying how you intend to address the comments provided by the two referees in your re-submission.

It seems that none of the raised points triggered any major debate, and in this sense, I would invite you to submit a correspondingly revised manuscript. I also appreciate your eagerness to include comments that go beyond the reviews themselves (notably the ones provided by L. Mingo) and expect this to be beneficial to an already-strong contribution. Similarly, the inclusion of an additional co-author (J. Paden) seems legitimate and justified.

I am looking forward to your revised manuscript.

Best regards
Daniel Farinotti

Dear authors,

many thanks for submitting your revised manuscript so swiftly.
The way that the individual suggestions brought forward by the referees have been implemented looks very satisfactory to me. It is thus my pleasure to tell that the article can be accepted for publication after technical corrections.

The only content-related point that I have links back to the first general comment of Reviewer #1: as was the case for the reviewer, I wonder whether you want to use some more words of caution when phrasing the main conclusion, i.e. when reporting the central frequency by which the majority of the glaciers of a particular region can be sounded. If I read Fig. 2a correctly, for Central Europe this conclusion suggests that a system of 200HMz or higher would be sufficient. I’m not suggesting this conclusion to be wrong, but if I had to invest money in a ice thickness sounding campaign, I would probably venture in the field with a system that has a frequency lower than that. If you have a similar gut feeling, please consider amending the text in a few instances.

The remaining comments are of purely technical nature. A set of specific remarks is given at the end of this document, whilst two general points are related to the format requirements of a Brief Communication:
1) With around 170 words, the abstract is 70% longer than it should be for the particular format (cf. the entry “Brief Communication” at https://www.the-cryosphere.net/about/manuscript_types.html). Although I imagine that there will be some tolerance when typesetting, please see if you can save some words here and there.
2) A similar comment applies for the overall length of the document. Whilst I don’t think there is a need for removing content, a careful check might allow for avoiding some particularly wordy construct (e.g. L. 27: “[…] temperate (i.e., at or near the pressure-melting point throughout)” could simply read “[…] temperate (i.e., at the pressure-melting point)”.

Whilst looking forward to seeing this interesting work published, please let me use the opportunity to congratulate you for its imminent completion.

Best regards
Daniel Farinotti


--- Specific remarks -----

L. 18: Please check and possibly clarify the wording “~500m per frequency decade”. I first thought that “frequency” might just need to be removed but I see that the exact same wording is used at L. 125.

L. 79-81: Please clarify that the stated “440m” (and other values) refer to the maximal thickness (I caught myself wondering if that might be the total profile length, or something else).

L. 99: Consider rewording “55 of 63” into something like “53 surveys out of 63”.

L. 109: Please clarify what “This synthesis” is referring to. Possibly simply reword into “The above synthesis”.

L. 111-112: Please check the last part of the sentence: I’m not sure what “there” is referring to.

L. 112-113: Please remove the full stop before the parenthesis.

L. 121: Consider starting a new sentence for the part beginning with “but”.

L. 131-134: Please check whether you can simplify this sentence. Possibly split the sentence into separate ones.

L. 139: Please check the use of “which”: it might be interpreted as referring to the subject of the sentence, i.e. to “this comparison”, causing the question about how this can be said to be “larger than” something.

L. 154-155: Please consider a slight reword: to me, the maximum thickness is “only reached at a single point” by definition, whilst the sentence seems to suggest some surprise for this assertion.

Figure 1: (1) Caption: please add “(blueish symbols)” (or similar) at the end of the second sentence, i.e. the one starting with “Cold glaciers are either those from…”. (2) Can the “blue arrows” in panel “(b)” be enlarged? It took me a while to spot them, and I first wondered whether the wording “represented by blue arrows” might be a leftover from previous versions.

Figure 2: Please use the caption to clarify that the two panels are used to differentiate between two sets of RGI regions, and that this split is only for reasons of readability.