Dear authors,

I have studied the revised manuscript and your detailed response to the comments. I did not send the manuscript for further review as you addressed the comments well, the earlier reviewers did not want to review the manuscript again and the manuscript has clearly improved. I have few minor comments for further improvement which I ask you address before possible acceptance:
- The discussion is about the methodology and the results is a bit short and hidden in the results section. Please either include an own discussion section or rename the “results” section to “results and discussion” and expand the discussion at least slightly.
- Supra-glacial lakes and ice cliffs are hot spots of melt at many debris-covered glaciers. This is should at least be mentioned in introduction.
- Include at least the most important information about the study region and do not only refer to your own previous study (section 2.1, L. 5/6).
- The results section contains also important information about the methodology, e.g. in section 5.3. This information should be moved to the methods section.
- You should usually not refer to other studies in the conclusions as you should draw conclusions from you own work. I would rather prefer to include Collier et al. (2014) in the discussion. However, this is also a matter of style and I leave therefor the decision to you.
- P. 5, L.26 (Section 2.2): Regarding the met data: Did you do any kind of quality control with the “unvalidated” data, such as outlier detection or plausibility check? If yes, please include this information; if not you need to include a statement about the quality of the data.

I am looking forward to receive the revised version. Do not hesitate to ask in case you have any questions.

Best regards,

Tobias
Editor TC

Dear authors,

You addressed the comments well. I am happy to accept the manuscript after one remaining issue is addressed. This issue was correctly highlighted by Etienne Berthier in his mail:
You compare your modelled ablation rates to the Bolch et al. (2011) results. It is in principle valuable to compare your modelled data to available “measured” ones. However, this comparison needs to be improved:
- You need to consider that the provided value is the mass balance for the entire glacier given in m w.e.., while you model the ablation.
- There are two other studies which present also mass balance values for the same glacier (but slightly different period): Nuimura et al. 2012, J. Glac. and Gardelle et al., 2013, TC. These studies should also be considered.
- Include also information about the time period for which the geodetic results were derived.

I am confident that you will address these final comments well and it is therefore not required that you send me the manuscript once again for review.
However, you are welcome to ask in case you have any question in this or other regards.
Thank you very much for your fine contribution to The Cryosphere.

All the best,

Tobias
Editor TC