Review for:

Moser, D. E., Thomas, E. R., Nehrbass-Ahles, C., Eichler, A., and Wolff, E.: Review article: Melt-Affected Ice Cores for (Sub-)Polar Research in a Warming World, EGUsphere [preprint], https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2023-1939, 2023.

General comments:

This is a great review paper on melt features in cores and should be published with some very minor changes. The authors do a great job in summarizing the importance of melt features and their effect on e.g. the climatic integrity of ice cores, which is of great importance to the ice core community.

I am missing a short explanation of the effect of melt in alpine and polar ice cores at the beginning of the manuscript. Similar to lines 577 to 581. This would be useful to distinguish when the authors refer to alpine or polar cores and to make it clear to the reader if the current section is valid for the full spectrum of melt events, i.e. massive melt events on coastal cores or tiny mm-melt events on the central Greenland ice sheet.

There are also some inconsistencies using the dash separating, e.g. “line scanning” and “line-scanning” throughout the manuscript.

For a better overview of the manuscript, I would suggest changing the list from (1)-(8) in lines 91 to 94 to the corresponding section numbers in the manuscript.

Specific comments:

Figure 1: I would prefer to see the scale explanation at the beginning of the caption.

Figure 2: the map of Antarctica (1) is misleading for the figure, as the largest part of Antarctica is the plateau, which is not the main message of the figure.

Line 132: “4 mm of melt” please specify if this is related to snow, firn, ice, or water equivalent.

Line 136-139: “Atmospheric rivers, especially during winter”. Neff 2018 describes atmospheric rivers during summer and Wille et al 2019 both summer and winter. Please rephrase the sentence “especially during winter”.

Line 184: please specify if coastal or central Antarctica.

Line 198 and 230: “Infiltration beyond the current year is a source of uncertainty” implies that most melt is in the current year’s snow layer. Line 230 states that melt does not tend to form at the surface but 50-100 cm deep, i.e. below the current year’s snow layer. The two sentences seem to contradict each other, please clarify.

Line 315 and 316: here it is not entirely clear if you refer to the snowpack or polar firn for the introduction of this section. Also, do you not analyze melt in deep ice because it does not penetrate that deep, or do you not analyze the effects of these old melt events? Please clarify.

Table 1: there is a dash and a word missing at the very bottom left of page 14.

Figure 5: a, b, and c are missing in the figure.

Line 499: is this “pre-melting” term the same as used, e.g., in line 181, or should it mean before/prior to melting?

Line 527: does “preserved” refer to a spatial sense in the snowpack? Please specify.

Line 663: do we not know exactly how many? Why is the number smaller or equal to 5?

Line 668: “frequently” makes it sound like a quasi-annual phenomenon, which is not the case. Please change the wording.

Line 670: “higher-altitude”, higher than in central Greenland? Please specify.

Line 712” with larger intensity, and at higher elevation further inland.” Change to: ”… with larger intensity, at higher elevation, and further inland”.