I was unable to open the online resources for review. I tried twice and am not sure where the error is occurring so this is not currently part of my review.

The manuscript by Barella et al. describes a detailed analysis of errors in melt calorimetry for snow liquid water content (LWC) calculations. They compare this to that of freezing calorimetry and additionally conduct experiments to determine some of the random user uncertainties associated with the method. The authors present some melt calorimetry field protocol and conduct field investigations to show the utility of the methods.

Overall, I really like the concept of this study as I stated in my previous review of an earlier version of this manuscript. I think that this study adds a great contribution to the use and application of melt calorimetry. However, many of my primary concerns in the previous review have been addressed. I suggested that this may be more appropriate as a technical note somewhere since it is an advancement on existing methods and equations. Making the code available helps bring this towards a research article and the addition of the calorimeter constant and experiments are an excellent addition. This will greatly improve my own work and the manuscript rightfully points out the high errors resulting from methods published in my own work. However, in my opinion it needs to be re-organized to be a research article. I would like to emphasize that I really like the project and that these comments are meant to be constructive and helpful in producing a more readable and impactful final paper.

I think more background as to why LWC in snow is important could be included, as stated in my previous review. Here are some of those papers. This is a minor point that I wish the authors to re-consider.

examples of possible background papers for consideration:

Valence et al., 2022: https://tc.copernicus.org/articles/16/3843/2022/

Donahue et al., 2022: https://tc.copernicus.org/articles/16/43/2022/

Eiriksson et al., 2013: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/hyp.9666

Leroux et al., 2020: https://doi.org/10.1029/2020WR027466

Schlumpf et al., 2024: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0165232X23002872

Major comments:

1. The frequent mention of how significant of an improvement is made by this work makes it appear more like an argument/perspective manuscript. I think the tone of the writing could be improved. The math is solid and I think the work stands on it’s own quite well without the need to argue for how much of an improvement on previous work. With how frequent this is done it lengthens some of the paragraphs and I think those familiar with the literature will see the impact of this improvement.
2. There is a lot going on and the writing jumps around quite a bit. I think that the manuscript needs to be re-organized for readability. In the current form, the writing is difficult to interpret what is methods, results, or discussion/interpretation. The manuscript would benefit from having distinct Methods, Results, and Discussion sections. As it is currently written, the manuscript bounces around quite a bit and is hard to follow.

More specific Comments (by line number):

326-328: This is one example of the type of statement that is repeated multiple times in the paper. Once the results are shown, the work stands on its own and this argument can be made once in a discussion or conclusion.

457-465: This seems like the methods for the experiments, but not enough details are given to re-produce this work. Some details are given later, but still not quite enough.

489: Were these conditions in the field or in a cold lab?

530: The current flow of the manuscript is odd. The protocol comes after discussion of the user experiments, even though much of the protocol is based on the uncertainty points made prior to the experiment sections. This is where a more clear methods, results, discussion could clarify much of this. The discussion of the uncertainty results would lead into the protocol discussion quite well.

571: How did you dry the calorimeter? I assume using a rag or something, but perhaps you learned something that could be useful here to reduce uncertainty with any moisture left in the container.

581: The SSA and IR seem to add little to this paper that is so focused on calorimetry.

591-598: This is a lot of details about the dates and max snow depth when only a single day was used. If only one of the 36 days were used, then only details from that one day are necessary.

638-641: I do not see the justification for not including the two depths that had different values. Yes, the LWC can vary significantly but then so could the values that you did compare. If the same volume of snow is not being tested and compared using the different methods, then all results should be used for comparison.  Also, with 36 days you could have many more than 16 or 18 measurements for comparison that would be better for comparison statistically.

672-673: “very similar” and “good stability” are not defined. At the previous site % values are given but not here. Please be consistent in quantitative comparisons.

967: Please use the appropriate reference as given in my previous review: Webb et al., 2021: https://www.mdpi.com/2072-4292/13/22/4617

My comments for editor and authors, see attached pdf