PIOMAS - Maximum Volume In April 2014 2nd Lowest On Record;
Another month has passed and so here is the updated Arctic sea ice volume graph as calculated by the Pan-Arctic Ice Ocean Modeling and Assimilation System (PIOMAS) at the Polar Science Center:
On the PIOMAS website the following is written:
The 2014 ice volume reached its annual maximum in April with 22,900 km3 which is just slightly below the long term trend and is the second lowest on record; just 400 km3 above the previous April minimum which occurred in 2011. However, variations over the last 4-years are well within the error bars of the volume estimates so that inter-annual variability over this period may be due to errors in the sea ice reanalysis.
Looking at the data I see that modelled volume reached 23,104 km3 on April 15th, which is slightly more than the 22,900 mentioned. Maybe the folks over at the PSC calculated the max differently.
Either way, it's the second lowest maximum in the PIOMAS record, more than 200 km3 below 2012 and 2013, and 427 km3 above 2011. At the end of April this has changed again (the Arctic cooled off slightly in the second half of April) with 2014 now in third spot, 658 km3 and 112 km3 above 2011 and 2012 respectively.
All of this is clearly visible on the PIOMAS graph produced by Wipneus (click for a larger version):
The anomaly trend line is still more or less in the same position relative to the linear trend line:
EDIT
http://neven1.typepad.com/
