I have read your manuscript several times and I thank you for carefully addressing the reviewer comments. Unfortunately, I do not think your manuscript is ready for publication with The Cryosphere at this time for the following reasons:

1. While I remain open to the story presented in the manuscript - that warm surface waters weakened melange, I do not see how this idea is supported in the manuscript as it is presented. You simply have no quantified metric of melange rigidity to really prove your observations. A few times in the text you say that you “believe that warm surface waters weakened melange”, but science must be more than belief - you must prove it. Other authors have used coherence of InSAR velocities in the melange to quantify rigidity of melange cover (Kehrl et al., 2018) or sea-ice fraction (Fried et al., 2018), or surface temperature (Cassotto et al. 2015) and so I recommend that you use one of these to really prove your conclusion.

2. It is unclear why you focus on the most recent retreat as your conclusions could be strengthened if you also examined prior retreats (like 2004). If 2004 acted similarly then it would support your conclusion, but even if 2004 did not act similarly, it would allow you to put your results into some context. Perhaps you could also do this for the period in 1997 when no winter advance happened.

3. Finally, I would like for you to revise the text to create separate Results and Discussion sections. I found it difficult to weed through to find you actual results.

4. Other comments are in the attached pdf.

Cassotto, R., Fahnestock, M. A., Amundson, J. M., Truffer, M., & Joughin, I. R. (2015). Seasonal and interannual variations in ice melange and its impact on terminus stability, Jakobshavn Isbræ, Greenland, 61(225), 76–88. http://doi.org/10.3189/2015JoG13J235

Fried, M. J., Catania, G. A., Stearns, L. A., Sutherland, D. A., Bartholomaus, T. C., Shroyer, E. L., & Nash, J. D. (2018). Reconciling Drivers of Seasonal Terminus Advance and Retreat at 13 Central West Greenland Tidewater Glaciers. Journal of Geophysical Research: Earth Surface, 115(73), F01005–18. http://doi.org/10.1029/2018JF004628

I hope you do not take this decision to heart. I think with a little work you can really prove your conclusions and revise this into a widely-cited paper. I encourage you to do so.

Hi Suzanne - I will accept this manuscript pending some minor revisions to the text in the attached pdf. Also, be sure to include that revised version of Fig. 3, which is great. I appreciate the effort you put into creating this new data set.