Both reviewers agreed that this paper address a topic of interest and that the model simulations demonstrating varied response of sea ice to changes in spatial distribution of freshwater input around Antarctica could be insightful. There are points in the reviews that have not been fully addressed in the authors response and I would like to receive this response before making a decision on the paper.

First of all, there is concern about the spin up time for the ocean, and in particular how this relates to the freshwater storage and upper ocean currents.

What is the time scale for ocean currents to reach equilibrium? How are you ensuring these are realistic in your model runs? Starting from rest in 1979 how can we know that the currents are correct given typical ocean spin up is closer to a century than a few decades? Can you provide insight into the spin-up of the ocean and how quickly the adjusts from the initial conditions? Is the model state close to the climatological values for the control runs? In general, as the ice extent is related closely to the ocean structure, it would improve the context of your results if you can show the ocean state.

Please elucidate what causes the increased ice drift in the experiments with increased freshwater flux. I am not sure I follow how this can be without increasing ocean currents, which is why I question if the model has spun up sufficiently. In the conclusions you offer a mechanism for the increased freshening, increased ice drift and decreased ice volume. Surely you can test if this is physically happening in your simulations by comparing S2 and S5.

I understand that you are essentially considering the rate of change of the model to a constant increase in freshwater. Do you have an idea of the equilibrium time scale of the adjustment? Is the system rate or time dependent?
Here I am asking you to elucidate on your response to reviewer 2: "The response times of ocean surface and deeper layers of the ocean to changes from the surface differ strongly. We are confident that the surface and the sea ice reaches near-equilibrium state within a fraction of the simulation period. We consider especially the differences between experiments to be reliable and due to the differences in runoff input since they present the only source of variability
between the runs. For these two reasons, we think the results trustworthy, although the ocean at depth is not in an equilibrium state."
- Why do you believe this?

The second point of concern is in regard to the robustness of the result that with increasing rate of freshwater input the ice pack can thin.
Further numerical experiments might lead to the identification of the sensitivity of ice volume to surface freshening. I would encourage you to consider performing these experiments.
Can you address reviewers 2 suggestion to perform more experiments that would indicate that a turning point exists?
The relationship between freshwater, SSH, currents and ice drift is interesting, though I suspect you can not fully explore this with the five experiments performed.

How robust are your results to choice of sea ice parameters in the model? Do you have information about such sensitivity for the control run?


Finally, your key result is that the spatial variability in freshwater input to the southern ocean is important in the sea ice mass balance. Can you distill the key points of this variability and point to the physical reasons for these?
What I am asking here is for you to sharpen the article around your key points. This will increase your readership I believe.

The supplemental sections need some editing. Pay attention to where you refer to chapters rather than sections. You could focus this information on to the model charcteristics pertenant to your experment.

Several of the reviewers points were asking for clarity in the manuscript. It would be good to address these in your revision.

Overall, I will reconsider this manuscript after major revision and would welcome a full consideration of the robustness of the stated findings. If you should need more time for further analysis, please do contact me and I will see if the journal will consider extending deadlines or working with you to support a future resubmission of this paper.

Sincerely,
Jenny

Dear Dr. Haid and co-authors,

While I am making a decision of minor revisions this is to reflect the fact that the revisions asked for are in tightening your writing and presentation, rather than additional work required in analysis. Both reviewers have key questions about the validity of statements in your conclusions. This must be addressed prior to publication. I would also ask you to throughly proof read your paper and consider presentation in the figures to make the paper easier for readers to follow.

Sincerely, Jenny

Dear Dr. Heid and co-authors,
Thank you for your detailed response to the reviews. Please can you make sure to proof read your final manuscript. Some small suggested edits are below.


Page 4

line 4: Consider writing out tanh as the full name "hyperbolic tangent". This is a personal style preference, up to you.

line 16: Remove "the" infront of "thermodynamic".

Page 7, line 5:
"The changeability" is not a phrase used in english. The way this reads is rather loose. I think you actually do need to use the word' variability and it's associated statistical meaning. "temporal variability" not "variability temporal"


Page 14, Line 5: "winter means of water properties" -> "winter mean water properties

Sincerely,
Jenny