The Los Alamos sea ice model (CICE) is tested in standalone mode in the study and the performance on seasonal sea ice prediction is examined. The paper is well written and organized with clear logics that readers can readily follow. The results present now is informative. However, one more aspect can be considered to further improve the manuscript. My comments are generally listed below:

1. I would recommend add “Summary” or “Conclusion” in the text. Currently, the paper is rather a technique report for the authors themselves rather than new findings that the whole community can learn from, since the effect of CS2 SIT on sea ice prediction has been studied widely and comprehensively for years including CICE model (literatures can be found easily not limited to what the authors currently provided). Therefore, a paragraph with “Summary” or “Conclusion” is necessary for distinct new findings specifically in this study.
2. Regarding “2.3 Initial Conditions”, the process to map CS2 SIT onto native model grid is not clear, for example, how to redistribute the mean thickness data to each category? what do the authors mean about the vicinity data to fill the North Pole, to what extent? which CS2 SIT record do you use, the daily or weekly? how the interpolation does? Bilinearly or conserved remapping?
3. Captions for Figure1 is not correct.
4. L119, we normally cite Zhang’s paper instead of Schweiger et al., 2011 as Zhang is the main developer.
5. L128-L131: please rephrase the text to discuss the results quantitively.
6. L134: Normally the seasonality of sea ice in the Antarctic cannot be like that, it’s not about the initialization but rather a fundamental problem in the model!
7. Figure 2a,b: I didn’t get it why Nov has such distinct small bias over lead month >2? Same in Figure3 but in April.
8. L187: With respect to tendencies arising from the thermodynamics and dynamics, for readers don’t use CICE will never know what that means! A description on which terms the two terms account for is necessary.

As attached (pdf file)