Dear Emily and co-authors

Thank you for your replies to the reviewers' comments. I would like to ask you to revise the manuscript according to the changes you proposed.

Best wishes,

Horst

Dear Emily and co-authors

Thank you for submitting a revised version of your manuscript and for having thoroughly addressed the reviewers' comments. As you can see from the review reports, one of the two reviewers is satisfied with the revisions, the other one request further changes to the manuscript. I believe that the critique is valid and that it should be relatively straightforward to address the reviewers' suggestions.

I would like to ask you to address the requested changes by the reviewer after which I will ask the reviewer's opinion probably for the final time.

Best wishes,

Horst

Dear Emily and co-authors

Thank you for the revised version of your manuscript. I gained the impression that you have addressed the remaining reviewer comments. Hence, I would like to accept the manuscript provided a few editorial comments will be addressed.

Throughout the entire manuscript, please change “impermeable” with "low-permeability" or "aquitards". None of the cited studies claim that ice slabs are fully impermeable. A fully impermeable state is very hard to reach and is also not needed to force a large fraction of the meltwater into ponding formation of slush fields and/or lateral surface runoff. This concerns lines 58, 452, 454 and 549.

Line 65: “0.0495 km2” the readers might ask themselves why the delineation between small and larger features is such a precise number. You might indicate that this number corresponds to a certain number of 30 m Landsat or MODIS pixels for clarification.

Lines 92-93: This is a crucial sentence, however, I have the impression it needs to be adapted to reflect the revised study: it still says “ice flow”, although that part was removed from the manuscript (apart from mentioning potential linkage between surface meltwater and ice dynamics in the discussion). Also check whether "throughput" is the right word or a remnant from the previous focus of the study. In my opinion, this reminds more of water discharge, but your study now focuses on a rather detailed and thorough description of the spatial and temporal distribution of surface hydrology in two contrasting melt seasons.

Lines 448 to 449: make statement clearer. “Minimum extent” over which area or region? Maybe instead of referring to your study, refer to your methodology, I assume you mean that "Our methodology of mapping slush from optical imagery provides a minimum bound for slush extent, ...."

Line 548: “surface properties”, consider replacing with "surface and firn" or "surface and near-surface"

Line 554 “subsurface features”; above labelled "surface properties", here "subsurface features". Please check and make consistent.

I thank the authors for having addressed my editorial comments and I believe the manuscript is now ready for publication.