Dear Armin Dachauer and co-authors,

Thank you very much for providing detailed responses to the reviewers’ comments. Based on those, I invite you to submit a revised manuscript.

The reviewers raised a few concerns that need to be addressed in the revised manuscript. The revised manuscript should 1) elaborate on potential uncertainties associated with the use of the Lettau formulation for z0 (reviewer #1), 2) discuss the required accuracy of z0 estimates in models to yield reliable turbulent heat fluxes (reviewer #2). 3) The authors should provide a data availability statement that complies with TC publication policy.

Please be informed that the revised manuscript will be sent to reviewers for re-evaluation.

Best wishes,

Brice Noël

Dear Armin Dachauer and co-authors,

We have now received comments from reviewers #1 and #2. The editor joins both reviewers and recommends publication of your manuscript in TC. Before publication, the authors should address the few technical corrections below, i.e., from reviewer #2 and the editor. Note that the line numbering refers to the revised manuscript.

Congratulations on the acceptance of your paper, and thank you for publishing your work with TC!

Best wishes,
Brice Noël

Reviewer #2 technical corrections:
L21. ‘surface characteristic’ should be singular. Strictly speaking, though, this is not independent of the meteorological properties unless you have an isotropically homogeneous surface. In particular, the results from this study (and others that you have referenced) show that wind direction exerts control over the aerodynamic roughness length, as the near-surface turbulence developed based on interactions with different obstacles. Also, though, stronger winds lead to a larger fetch footprint and interaction with more/difference obstacles (e.g. Nicholson and Stiperski, 2020) and result in a different z_0 value. Rather, you could say ‘z_0 is often considered a surface property and describes the expected loss of wind momentum…’
L25. ‘…(DEMs) as the basis for calculations.’
L28. ‘unmanned’ should be unpiloted or uncrewed in the first instance as well, for gender neutrality
L30. ‘topology’ -> ‘topography’
L91. Suggest ‘Due to the inaccessibility of the glacier surface, …’
L147. I would include ‘anisotropic’; the surface is not composed of streamlined elements with random orientations.
L175-176. This sentence is still a bit awkward. See also the editor technical comment.
L197. Remove the comma after ‘fact’
L390. I recommend mentioning here that this 3 order-of-magnitude difference (possibly leading to an ~8x change in turbulent fluxes) is not considered in models, and would affect the partition of mass loss between frontal ablation and surface ablation.
L423. ‘…might prove valuable…’ rather than approve.

Editor technical corrections:
L175: To address reviewer #2 comment, the editor suggests to insert commas as: “… to the glacier front, where crevasses are big and steep, using …”.
L188: “… absolute values of the Munro and Lettau models show …”
L206: “… but from opposite wind directions.”
L337: “… and in particular the raster method …”
Figure 6 caption: the editor suggests to define ‘rtl’ and ‘ltr’ in the caption as: “… from right-to-left (blue; rtl) and left-to-right (red; ltr)”