Thanks,
My immediate thought on reading the abstract was whether this could explain the recent spring melt anomaly in PIOMAS. The reverse seems to be the case.
PIOMAS uses the basic formulation of Hibler, which is what this paper is talking about. However it seems to me that by assimilating sea ice concentration data (observed) that PIOMAS may be overcoming the problem of free running non-assimilating models (GCMs). This could be a major reason why PIOMAS is showing a steeper volume decline. Although there are other reasons.
The issue for me at present is understanding why around the summer equinox the PIOMAS spring volume decline stops and volume anomalies then rise and plateau, precisely when the ice edge has retreated to within the Arctic Ocean and concentration assimilation would be expected to have maximum effect.
Should the spring volume anomaly continue into the summer? If so that would imply that summer minimum volume would be lower than PIOMAS shows.
I need to let my sub-conscious work on this and re-read two sections later this morning.