Overall comment:

This manuscript is in good shape. But there are two issues that MUST have attention given to them. (i) Terminology..the classes of lakes are not named at all well. I have suggested what to do. (ii) Argument of why we need to detect small lakes.; I am totally unconvinced by the GLOF angle...rather I suggest thinking about the effects of lakes on glaciers and the fact that many of these newly-formed small lakes will become larger with ongoing glacier mass loss. I have offered a coitation to start these thoughts but really a whole paragraph needs adding. Else the abstract needs a complete overhaul too.

[Response] Thank you for your encouragement and constructive comments, which have helped us to improve the quality of this article. We respond to the comments point by point as follows.

Regarding the terminology of lake classification systems, we have revised it as suggested. Now, in the first glacial lake classification system, glacial lakes were classified into four types based on their spatial relationship to upstream glaciers: supraglacial, ice-contact, unconnected-glacier-fed lakes, and non-glacier-fed lakes. In the second glacial lake classification system, glacial lakes were classified into five categories (herein named GLCS2) modified based on Yao’s classification system (2018): supraglacial, end-moraine-dammed, lateral-moraine-dammed, glacial-erosion lakes and ice-dammed lakes.

Regarding small lakes, we agree that small lakes have little or no hazardous impact due to their limited water release. The focus of this study is to generate a new glacial lake dataset for the CPEC, using 5 pixels as the mapping threshold for both Landsat and Sentinel images. We had to map all the glacial lakes, including small ones. If users want to conduct GLOF hazard risk studies, they have the flexibility to set a minimum threshold, such as greater than 0.05 km², to eliminate smaller lakes from our dataset. In addition, we argue that small lakes, such as supraglacial lakes, play an important role in glacier and lake evolutions, and affect cryosphere-hydrological changes. Thus our dataset has potential to be widely applied in studies on glacial lake-related hazards, glacier-lake interactions and cryospheric hydrology. We have made some changes in the Abstract and main text, and responded to the query of Line32.

We have also cited the recommended references and revised the abstract.

Specific comments:

Line 19: suggest rewording to …’one of a number of flagship projects…’

[Response] Revised as ‘…one of the flagship projects…’

Line 22, suggest delete ‘critical parameters’ and state ‘…parameters X and Y and Z…’ (list them out) Are these ALL glacial lakes? Or just ice-marginal ones? Supraglacial? Subglacial? Please specify. Add this specification into your methods.

[Response] Considering the dataset with 17 attributes, it is not suitable to list all of them here. So we decided to list three parameters for example, and revised this sentence to be: ‘An up-to-date, high-quality glacial lake dataset with parameters such as lake type, acquisition date and area, which is fundamental to flood risk assessments and predicting glacier-lake evolutions and cryosphere-hydrological changes…’

This study defines a glacial lake as one that formed as a result of modern or ancient glaciation. All glacial lakes in the study area were mapped according to our definition without any distance limit between lakes and glaciers. So it is not just ice-marginal glacial lakes. The dataset includes supraglacial lakes; however, it does not include subglacial lakes that are not detectable from optical satellite sensors. See section 4.1 and 4.3 for detailed description.

Line 24. I suggest to put the resolution(s) after the dataset type. Split sentence into two. One for lakes, one for glaciers, for clarity (because as written it is not clear if OI was for lakes or glaciers or both).

[Response] Following the suggestion, we have revised this sentence to be: ‘This dataset includes (1) a glacial lake inventory for the year 2020 at 10 m resolution produced from Sentinel spectral images, and (2) multi-temporal inventories for 1990, 2000, and 2020 produced from 30 m resolution Landsat images.…’

Line 30…is this 5 pixel threshold for both Landsat and Sentinel? Please clarify the thresholds for BOTH datasets.

[Response] Yes, the 5-pixel threshold is for both Landsat and Sentinel images. See ‘Landsat derived 2234 glacial lakes in 2020, covering a total area of 86.31±14.98 km² with a minimum mapping unit of 5 pixels (4500 m²), whereas Sentinel derived 7560 glacial lakes in 2020 with a total area of 103.70±8.45 km² with a minimum mapping unit of 5 pixels (500 m²).’

Line 31…I’m not sure this is ‘discrepancy’, rather simply a result that can be interpreted to be due to many small lakes.

[Response] We agree that the discrepancy cannot be simply interpreted by the differences in total number and area of both Landsat-derived and Sentinel-derived lake dataset. Hence, we performed a comparison between Sentinel-2 and Landsat derived products in section 6.1 and interpreted the discrepancy. It reads:

‘Glacial lakes from Landsat and Sentinel images have a high consistency in number and area with overlap rates from 85.7% to 94.26% for all lakes greater than about 0.0045 km² (Table 5), implying a good potential for coordinated utility with Landsat archived observation (Figure 11). Lake extents extracted from Landsat and Sentinel images match well for various lake types and sizes (Table 4). The best consistency rate reaches 94% for the glacial lakes between 0.1 km² and 0.2 km². The difference in area of glacial lakes extracted from Landsat and Sentinel images generally lies within the uncertainty ranges.’

Also, ‘Spatial resolution of satellite images plays a primary role in the discrepancies in count and area of glacial lakes extracted from Landsat (30 m) and Sentinel (10 m) observations. Due to a finer spatial resolution, Sentinel images can extract more glacial lakes and more accurate extents than those from Landsat images. We set the same 5 pixels as the minimum mapping unit for both Landsat and Sentinel images, which corresponds to a minimum area of 0.0045 km² and 0.0005 km², respectively. The minimum mapping area results in generating nearly 5000 more lakes from Sentinel images than from Landsat images, causing the greatest discrepancy in number of the two glacial lake products (Table 5), such as Figure 12a. ’

Line 32. Are (very) small lakes important? For hazards/GLOFs? Why? I think you need to discuss/show this….in the main text of the manuscript as well as here in the abstract…else the whole premise of your work is not represented/defended/argued (?!).

[Response] We agree that small lakes have little or no hazardous impact due to their limited water release. The focus of this study is to generate a new glacial lake dataset based on Landsat and Sentinel images in the CPEC, using 5 pixels as mapping threshold for both Landsat and Sentinel images. We had to map all the glacial lakes, including small ones. If users want to conduct GLOF hazard risk studies, they can set a minimum threshold, such as greater than 0.05 km², to select a subset of lakes from our dataset to eliminate the impact of small lakes. Small lakes, such as supraglacial lakes play an important role in glacier and lake evolutions, and affect cryosphere-hydrological changes. Thus our dataset has potential to be widely applied in studies on glacial lake-related hazards, glacier-lake interactions and cryospheric hydrology. We have made some changes in the Abstract and main text. It now reads:

‘An up-to-date high-quality glacial lake dataset with parameters such as lake type, acquisition date and area, which is fundamental to flood risk assessments and predicting glacier-lake evolutions and cryosphere-hydrological changes…’

‘This comprehensive glacial lake dataset has potential to be widely applied in studies on glacial lake-related hazards, glacier-lake interactions and cryospheric hydrology…’

‘Small lakes such as supraglacial lakes play an important role in understanding meltwater runoff and supraglacial drainage systems (Liu and Mayer, 2015; Miles et al., 2018). Our dataset can be used not only for GLOFs evaluation, but also for glacial lake evolution simulation and glacio-hydrological prediction. ’

Line 36…would be more useful to state the types of lakes please. And state the two

classifications systems please. Be explicit (!). what is the improved equation?! Name it!

[Response] The two classifications systems contain a total of nine types of glacial lakes, so specifying all types in the abstract will take up too much space. To keep the abstract concise and present improved equation, we changed this sentence to: ‘ A range of critical attributes have been generated in the dataset, including lake types and mapping uncertainty estimated by an improved Hanshaw’s equation’

Line 37. Potentials is not plural. Remove the ‘s’.

[Response] We have changed this sentence to ‘This comprehensive glacial lake dataset has potential to be widely applied in studies on glacial lake-related hazards, glacier-lake interactions and cryospheric hydrology…’

Line 48. You really must have to cite Carrivick and Tweed (2016) https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0921818116301023?via%3Dihub please! here. Furthermore, if you read that paper, the size of lakes producing hazardous GLOFs is reported. Small lakes (like the ones detected by your sentinel analysis v landsat) are not hazardous (!).

[Response] We agree and cited the reference from Carrivick and Tweed (2016). It now reads:

‘…glaciers and impacting downstream ecosystem services, agriculture, hydropower and other socioeconomic values (Carrivick and Tweed, 2016; Nie et al., 2021).’

About small lakes, we have responded to the previous inquiries.

Line 97. Please explain ‘type’ is this glacier terminus environment? Is it lake dam type? Is it lake position (supraglacial or ice-marginal for example?).

[Response] As suggested, we have revised this to be: ‘Dam type classification of glacial lakes provides a crucial attribute for glacier-lake interactions and risk assessment…’.

Line 173. A glacial lake is one that receives meltwater from a glacier. Of these most are proglacial (beyond the glacier) and can be attached (ice-marginal or ice-contact) or detached from the edge of the glacier. PLEASE correct this terminology. Then say what you do (which means you need to evaluate what sort of lakes you are actually analysing!).

[Response] We agree to divide proglacial lakes into ice-contact and unconnected-glacier-fed (detached) lakes in this study. We revised the classification system of glacial lakes. See the section 4.3.

We consider a glacial lake as one that formed as a result of modern or ancient glaciation. In this study, all glacial lakes were mapped according to this definition and are attributed using the two classification systems.

Line 186 ‘without any distance limit’…oh come on there must have been some limit?! The catchment or study area boundary at least?! Please evaluate what you have done and report it carefully.

[Response] Thank you for this comment. Our dataset is indeed limited by the study area boundary. To avoid any misunderstanding, this sentence was changed to ‘All glacial lakes in the study area were mapped according to our definition regardless of the distance to glaciers.’

Line 207 this info. on mapping units needs to be accurately represented in the abstract.

[Response] We agree, and have revised this sentence to be: ‘The results show that Landsat derived 2234 glacial lakes in 2020, covering a total area of 86.31±14.98 km² with a minimum mapping unit of 5 pixels (4500 m²), whereas Sentinel derived 7560 glacial lakes in 2020 with a total area of 103.70±8.45 km² with a minimum mapping unit of 5 pixels (500 m²).’

Line 233. This spatial relationship needs to be explicitly named above in the manuscript where I have already queried it. I dislike this classification. See Carrivick and Tweed (2013) https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S027737911300293X for definition of proglacial lakes (my comment for line 173). Supraglacial is a distinct group so that is OK. Proglacial and unconnected are the same/overlap…you need ‘ice-marginal’ and ‘other proglacial’ I think, then ‘other lakes’ as your classes/types.

[Response] Thank you for this valuable suggestion. As we responded earlier, we agree to divide proglacial lakes into ice-contact and unconnected-glacier-fed (detached) lakes. We have revised this consistently throughout the main text, figures, tables and attribute of our glacial lake dataset.

This sentence was changed to ‘…glacial lakes were classified into four types based on their spatial relationship to upstream glaciers: supraglacial, ice-contact, unconnected-glacier-fed lakes, and non-glacier-fed lakes according to Gardelle et al. (2011) and Carrivick et al. (2013).’

Line 238. The terminology again is wrong here and confusing because mixes position and dam type. See Carrivick and Tweed (2013) https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S027737911300293X . You should have supraglacial, terminus moraine-dammed, lateral moraine dammed, ice-dammed and bedrock-dammed I suggest.

[Response] Considering the formation mechanism and dam properties of glacial lakes, the second glacial lake classification system was established via modifying Yao’s classification system (2018). According to your suggestion, we have revised the terminology of the classification system to ice-dammed, end-moraine-dammed, lateral-moraine-dammed and supraglacial lakes. Glacial-erosion lakes contain both bedrock-dominated dam and top-moraine-mixed dam, so we prefer to use glacial-erosion lakes instead of bedrock-dammed lakes. It now reads:

‘Alternatively, combining the formation mechanism of glacial lakes and the properties of natural dam features, glacial lakes were classified into five categories (herein named GLCS2) modified from Yao’s classification system (2018): supraglacial, end-moraine-dammed, lateral-moraine-dammed, glacial-erosion lakes and ice-dammed lakes.’

Line 318 to 326. I suggest to compare to (and cite) Carrivick and Quincey (2014) who also consider uncertainty v lake area. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S092181811400054X?via%3Dihub

[Response] We cited the reference from Carrivick and Quincey (2014). It now reads ‘Lake perimeter and displacement error are widely used to estimate the uncertainty of glacier and lake mapping from satellite observation (Carrivick and Quincey, 2014; Hanshaw and Bookhagen, 2014; Wang et al., 2020).’

The difference in uncertainty estimation between Carrivick’s and Hanshaw's methods is that Carrivick assumes an uncertainty of ±1 pixel, while Hanshaw assumes an uncertainty of ±0.5 pixels and counts the number of edge pixels. In this study, we discovered and solved the problem of repeatedly calculated edge pixels. Considering that the mean lake size in the study area is smaller than that in the Greenland, we prefer to choose the improved Hanshaw’s equation to estimate the mapping uncertainty.

Line 453…so do we need Sentinel images for lake mapping?? If Landsat is doing a good job v sentinel (detection as well as accuracy) then why do we need the extra resolution? What importance do the numerous small lakes have? They are not important volumetrically? Are they important for hazards/GLOFs? (I don’t think so!). I really think the ‘promoted capacity of GLOF risk assessment’ (line 543) needs further elaboration.

[Response] We believe Sentinel images do offer their unique benefits in mapping glacier lakes, owing to their finer spatial resolution, increasing capacity of revisit observation and accurately depicting lake boundaries with a lower uncertainty. We further clarified these as: ‘Due to a finer spatial resolution, Sentinel images can extract more glacial lakes and more accurate extents than those from Landsat images….Meanwhile, Sentinel images are able to depict boundaries of glacial lake with a lower uncertainty (Figure 12b-d). For example, some small islands and narrow channels (Figure 12b and c) were mapped from Sentinel imagery that were unable to be detected in Landsat imagery.’

Regarding small lakes, we have responded to a similar query earlier:

‘Small lakes such as supraglacial lakes play an important role in understanding meltwater runoff and supraglacial drainage systems (Liu and Mayer, 2015; Miles et al., 2018). Our dataset can be used not only for GLOFs evaluation, but also for glacial lake evolution simulation and glacio-hydrological prediction. ’

About ‘promoted capacity of GLOF risk assessment’ (line 543), we revised this sentence to be ‘Herein, we provide an up-to-date glacial lake dataset derived from both Landsat and Sentinel observations, which further increased the availability of glacial lake datasets for GLOFs risk assessment, predicting glacier evolutions and understanding cryosphere-hydrological changes in the context of climate change.’

In contrast, I think a utility of your dataset and indeed your sentinel-based detection of many small lakes is that those small lakes could be the onset of fast-developing proglacial landscapes…and they will likely grow as glaciers diminish further and affect glacier dynamics (see Carrivick et al., 2020 for example https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/feart.2020.577068/full )

[Response] Thank you for your affirmation and encouragement. The Sentinel-derived lake dataset has a wider potential than Landsat-derived dataset to be used in studies on proglacial landscape change and glacier dynamic assessment. The recommended reference is important and cited in the main text.

References

Carrivick, J.L., Tweed, F.S.: Proglacial lakes: character, behaviour and geological importance. Quaternary Sci. Rev., 78: 34-52, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.quascirev.2013.07.028, 2013.

Carrivick, J.L., Tweed, F.S.: A global assessment of the societal impacts of glacier outburst floods. Global Planet. Change, 144: 1-16, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gloplacha.2016.07.001, 2016.

Gardelle, J., Arnaud, Y., Berthier, E.: Contrasted evolution of glacial lakes along the Hindu Kush Himalaya mountain range between 1990 and 2009. Global Planet. Change, 75: 47-55, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gloplacha.2010.10.003, 2011.

Liu, Q., Mayer, C.: Distribution and interannual variability of supraglacial lakes on debris-covered glaciers in the Khan Tengri-Tumor Mountains, Central Asia. Environ. Res. Lett., 10: 014014 2015.

Miles, E.S., Watson, C.S., Brun, F., Berthier, E., Esteves, M., Quincey, D.J., Miles, K.E., Hubbard, B., Wagnon, P.: Glacial and geomorphic effects of a supraglacial lake drainage and outburst event, Everest region, Nepal Himalaya. The Cryosphere, 12: 3891-3905, https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-12-3891-2018, 2018.

Nie, Y., Pritchard, H.D., Liu, Q., Hennig, T., Wang, W., Wang, X., Liu, S., Nepal, S., Samyn, D., Hewitt, K., Chen, X.: Glacial change and hydrological implications in the Himalaya and Karakoram. Nature Reviews Earth & Environment, 2: 91-106, https://doi.org/10.1038/s43017-020-00124-w, 2021.

Yao, X., Liu, S., Han, L., Sun, M., Zhao, L.: Definition and classification system of glacial lake for inventory and hazards study. J. Geogr. Sci., 28: 193-205, https://doi.org/10.1007/s11442-018-1467-z, 2018.

graphs is from Landsat and the other from Sentinel - you only understand this once you have read to the end of the caption, and it needs to be signposted earlier.

[Response] We have added Landsat and Sentinel at the upper left corner of the figure 4 to differentiate.

L339: 'proglacier' >> 'proglacial'

[Response] According to suggestions from Reviewer #1, we replaced 'proglacial' with ‘ice-contact’ and corrected the typo.

Figure 5: The four maps are somewhat repetitive and it is difficult to see differences between the Sentinel and Landsat lake sizes/abundance from this. I would suggest changing this figure to have an overview map on the left showing all detected lakes from both methods, and a series of inset maps to the right displaying a closer look at certain regions of interest; divided into Sentinel and Landsat lakes. Also, maybe change the outline colour of the lake points to a darker shade, as it is hard to identify the lake points in the current figure.

[Response] The figure 5 aims to describe the distribution of glacial lakes in 2020 extracted from Landsat and Sentinel, and all lakes are classified by GLCS1 and GLCS2. From this point of view, it is not repetitive. For clarity, we added ‘Landsat’ for ‘panels a and b’, and ‘Sentinel’ for ‘panels c and d’. Meanwhile, differences in glacial lakes from Landsat and Sentinel can be clearly seen compared to "Panels a and c" using GLCS1 and "Panels b and d" using GLCS2. A closer look at certain regions of interest is showed in figure 11 and 12. That is why we designed this Figure.

As suggested, we set the outline of lake points to black with a thicker size in order to better differentiate the lake points.

L352: This is a hanging line, and I am not sure which panels and sub-graphs are being referred to here. Does this belong somewhere else or is this a fault with the journal formatting?

[Response] We corrected this typo and ensure all captions are complete in the main text.

Figure 7 and 8: These graphs are very effective at showing changes in lakes - a refreshing take on presenting this type of dataset.

[Response] Thank you very much.

L382: '...while the area grew by a less extent (1.21 km² or 1.42%).' >> '...while the area grew by 1.21 km² (or 1.42%).'

[Response] Revised as ‘while the area grew by 1.21 km² (or 1.42%).’

L408: '...including being stable for Shingo...' >> '...including a stable trend for Shingo...'

[Response] Revised as ‘...including a stable trend for Shingo...’

L411-412: 'The total numbers of Kashgar and Hunza basins decreased...' >> 'The total number of lakes in Kashgar and Hunza basins decreased...'

[Response] Revised as ‘The total number of lakes in Kashgar and Hunza basins decreased...’

L426-27 and Table 5: Can you include some statistics on the link between lake size and % overlap between the Sentinel-2 and Landsat counts? - this would help gauge how much spatial resolution (differentiated from image acquisition) affects lake classification in this study.

[Response] Thanks for this suggestion. We tried but did not find any significant statistics between lake sizes and overlapping rates. Impact of spatial resolutions on classification accuracy of lake types is very interesting. We hope to conduct such studies in the future, however this is beyond the goal of this study.

L441-443: Are these lakes persistently large or just at a particular time step? Do you have evidence as to why they are disproportionally large?

[Response] These lakes are persistently large, and we deleted ‘disproportionally’ to avoid any misunderstandings.

L481-485: Can you state here the number of instances where overlapping acquisitions were acquired?

[Response] Revised as ‘…is relatively low (only 7 scenes of Sentinel images or 112 glacial lakes in 2020)…’

L492: 'approximate' >> 'approximately'

[Response] Changed to ‘approximately’.

L503-504: Are there any studies that present glacial lake datasets derived from

Sentinel-2? If so, please reference them here. If not, then change this to state that there are no comparable datasets, rather than a scarce number of datasets.

[Response] Agreed, it new reads:

‘Regional glacial lake datasets using Sentinel images are scarce. Lack of Sentinel-derived glacial lake datasets in the study area makes it impossible to compare.’

L515-521: I think, similar to your suggestion regarding landslide-dammed lakes, a likely answer is that Wang et al. focus more on glacier-connected lakes, given that they adopt a 10 km buffer to filter out unconnected lakes. And therefore they identify an increasing trend, possibly reflective of a subset of your lake types. Could you subset your lake dataset to match the lakes identified by Wang et al., and examine whether you also see this increasing trend evident in your subsetted dataset? (And perhaps also include landslide-dammed lake for the purpose of this comparison?)

[Response] Both Wang’ study and ours are regional-scale glacial lake inventories and do not only focus on active lakes. Regarding discrepancy, all glacial lakes in the study area were mapped according to our definition regardless of the proximity to glaciers whilst Wang’s data was filtered by a 10-km buffer zone from glaciers. That is the reason that we mapped more lakes than Wang’s for each time period. Our lakes dataset maps all glacial lakes in the study area for the first time, making up for missing lakes in other datasets. The missing lakes are mostly non-glacier-fed lakes that remain relatively stable in the past decades (Figure 7), having little impact on changing trend in glacial lakes.

Our study demonstrates that end-moraine-dammed lakes increased by 2.48 km² and contributed most of the glacier lake area expansion, whereas supraglacial, ice-dammed and lateral-moraine-dammed lakes decreased slightly in both number and area. This trend is consistent with the slightly negative mass balance of glaciers in the study area (covering Pamir, Karakoram etc.). Based on the analysis of Wang’s data, we find that newly-emerged and expanded landslide-dammed lakes contributed most to the increase in lake area, and manually delineating glacial lakes twice by different operators exacerbated the errors of mapping. These reasons result in an increasing trend in their study. We have proposed the reason in the main text.

Landslide-dammed lakes fluctuate greatly with time and expanded recently in the study area, differing from typical glacial lakes. According to our definition on glacial lakes, Landslide-dammed lakes are excluded. Our dataset shows a long-term regional changing trend of all glacial lakes. A comparison in the condition of including landslide-dammed lakes is beyond the goal of our present study and seems unnecessary. Thanks for your support and understanding.

L530: "Zhang's dataset..." >> "The dataset from Zhang et al. (2015) ..."

[Response] Revised as ‘The dataset from Zhang et al. (2015)...’

L531-536: I am unsure how this study and Zhang et al. could have discrepancies in image availability when both studies are classifying lakes from the same satellite image collection (Landsat). Some clarification is needed here to demonstrate how your dataset could classify these lakes when Zhang et al. could not.

[Response] We revised this sentence. It now reads:

‘…we attributed this anomalous discrepancy to a range of glacial lakes that were missing due to lack of thorough cross-check quality assurance and the limit of a 10-km buffer zone from glaciers during their manual delineation.’

L538-544: Discrepancies in glacial lake datasets can be because of minimum lake size, classification method (i.e. not just optical), image acquisition and post-filtering. However, if the purpose of this dataset is to 'further promote the capacity of GLOF risk assessment and predicting glacier evolutions' then I am unsure why there is no spatial filter (relative to ice margin position) adopted to remove lakes that are unconnected to the glacial system. I think the focus of this study needs to be shifted (as stated earlier in major comments), and further analysis needs to be presented that demonstrates changes in GLOF and glacier-fed lakes specifically (i.e. filtered by lake type and size) - see major comments for full details.

[Response] The focus of this study is to provide a complete glacial lake dataset based on Landsat and Sentinel images, which has potential to be widely applied in studies on glacial lake-related hazards, glacier-lake interactions and cryospheric hydrology. We made some modifications to be more explicit about the goals of this study and the importance of our dataset. The sentence was changed to:

‘…we provide an up-to-date glacial lake dataset derived from both Landsat and Sentinel observations, which further increased the availability of glacial lake datasets for GLOFs risk assessment, predicting glacier evolutions (Carrivick et al., 2020) cryosphere-hydrological changes…’

L550: 'Even though an capacity of repetitive observations...' >> 'Even though the capacity of repeat observations...'

[Response] Revised as ‘Even though the capacity of repeat observations...’

L557: '...inter- and intra-annual changes (Liu et al., 2020) in glacial lake dataset of each time period...' >> '...inter- and intra-annual changes (Lie et al., 2020) for each time period...'

[Response] Revised as ‘...inter- and intra-annual changes (Liu et al., 2020) for each time period...’

L545-564: This is a valuable section to include in the study. The temporal range of these datasets and limited image availability (especially in formative years) will not adequately capture the dynamic nature of draining glacial lakes; and therefore such datasets serve as a gauge of long-term, regional trends rather than individual lake change.

[Response] We are thankful for your support and understanding.

L565-575: It is great to hear that this work will be continued, and new time steps will be included in the dataset in the future.

[Response] Thanks for your encouragement.

L584: '...spatial-temporal changes at longer time scale...' >> '...spatial-temporal changes at a longer time scale...'

[Response] Revised as ' ...spatial-temporal changes at a longer time scale... '.

L584: 'observation' >> 'observations'

[Response] Revised as ' observations '.

L585: 'started' >> 'starting'

[Response] Revised as ' starting '.

L595-596: See previous comment from L538-544 regarding this statement.

[Response] As responded to earlier questions. This sentence was changed to:

‘…maximize their potential utility for GLOFs risk evaluation, cryosphere-hydrological and glacier-lake evolution projection.’

L602: 'values for cryospheric-hydrology research, assessment of...' >> 'value to cryospheric-hydrology research, the assessment of...'

[Response] Revised as 'value to cryospheric-hydrology research, the assessment of... '

References

Carrivick, J.L., Quincey, D.J.: Progressive increase in number and volume of ice-marginal lakes on the western margin of the Greenland Ice Sheet. Global Planet. Change, 116: 156-163, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gloplacha.2014.02.009, 2014.

Carrivick, J.L., Tweed, F.S., Sutherland, J.L., Mallalieu, J.: Toward Numerical Modeling of Interactions Between Ice-Marginal Proglacial Lakes and Glaciers. Front. Earth Sci, 8, https://doi.org/10.3389/feart.2020.577068, 2020.

Hanshaw, M.N., Bookhagen, B.: Glacial areas, lake areas, and snow lines from 1975 to 2012: status of the Cordillera Vilcanota, including the Quelccaya Ice Cap, northern central Andes, Peru. The Cryosphere, 8: 359-376, https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-8-359-2014, 2014.

How, P., Messerli, A., Mätzler, E., Santoro, M., Wiesmann, A., Caduff, R., Langley, K., Bojesen, M.H., Paul, F., Kääb, A., Carrivick, J.L.: Greenland-wide inventory of ice marginal lakes using a multi-method approach. Sci. Rep.-UK, 11: 4481, https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-021-83509-1, 2021.

Liu, Q., Mayer, C.: Distribution and interannual variability of supraglacial lakes on debris-covered glaciers in the Khan Tengri-Tumor Mountains, Central Asia. Environ. Res. Lett., 10: 014014 2015.

Liu, Q., Mayer, C., Wang, X., Nie, Y., Wu, K., Wei, J., Liu, S.: Interannual flow dynamics driven by frontal retreat of a lake-terminating glacier in the Chinese Central Himalaya. Earth Planet. Sc. Lett., 546: 116450, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.epsl.2020.116450, 2020.

Miles, E.S., Watson, C.S., Brun, F., Berthier, E., Esteves, M., Quincey, D.J., Miles, K.E., Hubbard, B., Wagnon, P.: Glacial and geomorphic effects of a supraglacial lake drainage and outburst event, Everest region, Nepal Himalaya. The Cryosphere, 12: 3891-3905, https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-12-3891-2018, 2018.

Nie, Y., Sheng, Y., Liu, Q., Liu, L., Liu, S., Zhang, Y., Song, C.: A regional-scale assessment of Himalayan glacial lake changes using satellite observations from 1990 to 2015. Remote Sens. Environ., 189: 1-13, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.rse.2016.11.008, 2017.

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