Dear Nicolai Holzer and Tobias Bolch,

I have now read your revised manuscript and your response to the referees. Both referees were rather positive about your study although they made numerous suggestions to improve the manuscript, in particular its structure.

You addressed satisfyingly most of their comments.

However, I still have myself some comments on your paper. You will find them in the attached annotated document. Feel free to contact me directly if something is unclear. I believe that the language could still be improved (I am not the best person to correct it), at least to avoid any ambiguity.

To facilitate and speed up the review process, please attach to your revised manuscript a cover letter detailing the changes you have made in response to my comments.

Good luck with the second round of revision,

Etienne Berthier

Holzer et al.,
Revised version, October 2015

Dear Nicolai and co-authors,

Thanks for considering carefully all my suggestions. In view of this careful revision of your manuscript, I have the pleasure to accept your study for publication in The Cryosphere.

Two minor points:
Annual glaciological mass balances for Muztag Ata Glacier: I will not impede publication of your study for this reason but for future studies, you should motivate your Chinese collaborators to publish these data and share them with the rest of the community through the WGMS database.

Table 5. I think you need to indicate to the copy-editor that this table should appear in Appendix. See also the page http://www.the-cryosphere.net/for_authors/manuscript_preparation.html where it is stated:
“Appendices: These should be labelled with capital letters: Appendix A, Appendix B etc. Equations, figures and tables should be numbered as (A1), Fig. B5 or Table C6, respectively. Please keep in mind that appendices are part of the manuscript whereas supplements (see below) are published along with the manuscript.”

Thanks a lot for choosing The Cryosphere to publish your work,
Best regards,
Etienne Berthier