Satellite Observations for Detecting and Forecasting Sea-Ice Conditions: A Summary of Advances Made in the SPICES Project by the EU’s Horizon 2020 Programme
, Jari Haapala 1, Giuseppe Aulicino 2, Beena Balan-Sarojini 3, Magdalena Balmaseda 3, Alexandru Gegiuc 1, Fanny Girard-Ardhuin 4, Stefan Hendricks 5, Georg Heygster 6, Larysa Istomina 5, Lars Kaleschke 5, Juha Karvonen 1, Thomas Krumpen 5, Mikko Lensu 1, Michael Mayer 3,7, Flavio Parmiggiani 8, Robert Ricker 4,5, Eero Rinne 1, Amelie Schmitt 9, Markku Similä 1, Steffen Tietsche 3, Mai Winstrup 12 and add
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Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
This is a very well written paper providing comprehensive description of new sea ice products in the SPICES project.There are just a few questions I am not clear in the combined SMOS/SMAP SIT retrieval. In line 282, which polarization is 2.7K bias in? When the linear fit is applied, does it adjust both SMOS and SMAP Tb's? Are both polarizations used in SIT retrieval? Any ground truth to validate the combined retrieval? Other than that, I consider this paper ready to be published.
Author Response
Please see the attachment which includes comments by all three reviewers and our responses to them.
Author Response File: 
Author Response.docx
Reviewer 2 Report
Check the correct use of the preposition “on” in the text. For example, “New Products on Sea Ice Conditions” (Line 107). Better “New Products of Sea Ice Conditions” or “New Sea Ice Conditions Products”.
Line 4. Remove “Horizon 2020” from the name because it is a source of financing (the information is in the annotation) or write so “... SPICES Project by the EU Horizon 2020 program”.
Line 79. "... some of the sea ice models assimilating satellite data" - provide links to work on this topic
Line 85-86. "Today’s numerical weather and climate prediction models include a 85 comprehensive representation of large-scale physical processes of sea ice" - provide links to work on this topic. ‘Today’s’ change on “Present”.
Line 113. “... CryoSat-2 radar altimeter (RA)” - correctly “SAR Interferometer Radar Altimeter (SIRAL)”. There is a fundamental difference between the "classic" radar altimeter (Low resolution mode - LRM) and SAR (or delay-Doppler) Radar Altimeter.
Line 174. "... wavelength of waves ...". What is it?
Line 230. “... RA waveform ...” change on “... RA echo waveform ...”.
Line 244. “... to other delay-Doppler RAs, ...” change on “... to other SAR (or delay-Doppler) RAs, ...”.
Line 261. “... CryoSat-2 RA, ...” change on “... CryoSat-2 SIRAL, ...”.
Line 323. “... a result of a temperature increase, ...”. Water or air temperature? When talking about an temperature increase, it is necessary to indicate what value.
Author Response
Please see the attachment which includes comments by all three reviewers and our responses to them.
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
Reviewer 3 Report
I would like to thank you for your work and for preparing this paper. It is a important and current topic, with applicability for both the advancement of scientific method but, perhaps most importantly, for their adoption by operational services activity sectors.
Minor revisions:
Lines 85 – 86: please cite
Lines 91 – 93: please cite
Line 135: please define NM (nautical mile)
Some figures are at a low resolution; please solve this issue.
This paper uses a lot of acronyms. I kindly ask the authors to create a new subsection with a list of all acronyms. It is quite difficult for readers to remember which one is which [even if there are defined first time in text].
Author Response
Please see the attachment which includes comments by all three reviewers and our responses to them.
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
