Dear Dr. Maguire,

Thank you again for submitting your manuscript "Geophysical constraints on the properties of a subglacial lake in northwest Greenland" to The Cryosphere. I have now received reports from two anonymous reviewers and an interactive comment from Dr. Buffo. After careful consideration of your detailed responses and proposed modifications, I have decided to invite a major revision of the manuscript. Once we have your updated files, I will send the revised version back to review by the two reviewers.

P.S.
Please allow me to apologize for the delay in sending a decision on your manuscript. I was out of the office and was unable to react quickly. In the meantime, thank you for your patience.

Yours sincerely,
Evgeny Podolskiy

Dear Dr. Maguire,

Thank you for resubmitting your manuscript "Geophysical constraints on the properties of a subglacial lake in northwest Greenland" to The Cryosphere. We have now received reports from the two scholars who were reviewers for the manuscript's previous version.

As you will see from their reports, even if Reviewer #2 finds that the paper's overall quality has been improved and requires only several minor corrections, Reviewer #1 finds that two points remain to be further developed. Specifically, Reviewer #1 suggests that the description of GPR-reflectivity anomaly (relative to the surroundings) is insufficient to convince the readers, and therefore Fig. 3 should be expanded by additional analysis. Also, Reviewer #1 can not agree that the previously recommended conductivity analysis is impossible.

Please address these specific reviewer requests, or if you consider any points invalid, please explain why in your point-by-point responses.

Best Regards,
Evgeny Podolskiy

Dear Dr. Maguire,

Thank you for addressing the second set of remarks by the two reviewers. I find the latest modifications and your argumentation convincing. In light of the previous evaluations by the reviewers and your additional revisions, in principle, I am pleased to accept your paper for publication in The Cryosphere.

As you prepare your final files, please, consider the following minor comments (directly marked in your article file or indicated below).

Sincerely yours,
Evgeny Podolskiy

***
[Minor Comments]

[Labels in figures, captions, and the main text]

I hate to note the following, but it is my job. According to the journal's guidelines about figures (https://www.the-cryosphere.net/submission.html#figurestables):

1) "Labels of panels must be included with brackets around letters being lower case (e.g. (a), (b), etc.)." Now they are all shown without brackets and in upper case. This applies to all captions and the main text.

2) "Units must be written exponentially" like in the main text, but now Figs. 3c, the insets in 5b & c, and 6 are using "/".

3) "Capitalization: only the first word is capitalized in headers". Now formatting of axis labels is inconsistent, e.g., Figs. 1-5 have no capitalizing at all or Fig. 3c capitalizes both words (Relative Power).

Please, go through the article to prepare your figures and their citations for publication (to avoid delays at production).


[Data and Code availability]

"Authors are required to provide a statement on how their underlying research data can be accessed. This must be placed as the section "Data availability" at the end of the manuscript." The same applies to Code availability. For details, please see here:

https://www.the-cryosphere.net/policies/data_policy.html


[Supporting Information, SI]

Fig. S2a caption
-> please, indicate the source/reference of the density profile at DYE-3 used in this figure.

2. Polarity analysis
Please add a reference to the statement of the first sentence.

(Fig 4) -> (Fig. 4)

Fig. S4 caption -
"B and C respectively" -> please, place a comma before ‘respectively’.

Please note that throughout the SI, the density of ice is assumed inconsistently (950 or 920 kg m-3).

3. Thermal Modeling,
-> Thermal modeling

point 3:
"We could however, we can estimate the effect"
-> We could, however, estimate the effect"

[Patankar, 1980] is not shown in the reference list.

4. Hydraulic Head Estimates
-> Hydraulic head estimates

In this section, references are made to Fig. S4, but should be to Fig. S5.

Dear Dr. Maguire,

Thank you for revising the figures and making the corresponding changes in the text.

In the previous decision letter, I attached your article file with my comments about multiple technical corrections (additionally to those listed directly in my e-mail). Perhaps due to some misunderstanding, most of these little remarks have not been addressed. (For example, the title in Fig. 6b mentions only Ts = -22 oC, but its caption mentions -22 and -20 oC). Could you please take them into account? For your convenience, I am attaching that file again (after removing all questions that you have already solved).

You have mentioned that you will update the Data-availability statement at the proof stage, and, formally, I am happy to accept the paper. Nevertheless, just for your information, such modification is likely to be considered substantial by our copy-editors. So the proofs may return to me for additional coordination. I leave it to you to decide when to incorporate the Data-availability statement. There are plenty of public depositories today, like Zenodo, and etc.

Yours sincerely,
Evgeny Podolskiy