Summary: I'd be perfectly happy as a reviewer to see this paper published as is. In fact, the reason I'm able to get my review in quickly is because the authors made it so easy to read and review.

The paper starts off with a great name for the new model (FjordRPM). Then comes a tidy and concise schematic in Figure 1 that makes clear what the paper is about. Section 2 cleanly layouts the internals of FjordRPM. It pulls together existing model pieces (like the plume model and aspects of iceberg melt), plus a few new things (like the shelf exchange idealization), into a coherent fjord box model. Section 3 gives a high-level overview of how it's implemented as Matlab code. Then Section 4 proves just how good the model is relative to its efficiency: compared to a full 3D MITgcm model, FjordRPM holds it own. (In fact, as someone who uses the MITgcm for fjord simulations, it's almost a bit disappointing that FjordRPM dynamics are captured so well.)

I can see this model (and future iterations alluded to in the paper) being very useful to folks interested in Greenland-wide scales who cannot simulate the fjords themselves, but want to include their effects. Indeed, the clean and clear Github repo with steps to reproduce all the experiments means it'll be easy for someone to pick this up and configure it for their own use.

Excellent work. Ken Hughes, January 2025

Suggestions for improvement

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As I say, I'm perfectly happy with the paper as is, but you may want to consider the following things

It's good practice to use upright text, not italics, in subscripts and superscripts when they are being used as labels: http://physics.nist.gov/cuu/pdf/typefaces.pdf. This is especially useful for improving the look of longer labels like 'eff', 'above', and 'melt'

Consider removing the Conclusion section. The text in the Discussion in more profound and interesting (and less a repeat of the early sections of the paper). It therefore seems, to me at least, to be a much stronger way to finish the paper. Change the heading 'Discussion' to 'Discussion and Conclusion'

Typo at 590 'that' > 'than'

Please see the attached file.