Figure 4.14. Pentadal (five-year) average mass balance of the world’s glaciers and ice caps excluding those around the ice sheets of Greenland and Antarctica. Mean specific mass balance (left axis) is converted to total mass balance and to SLE (right axis) using the total ice surface area of 546 × 10³ km² ( Table 4.3 ) and the ocean surface area of 362 × 10⁶ km². C05a is an arithmetic mean over all annual measurements within each pentade (Cogley, 2005); the grey envelope is the 90% confidence level of the C05a data and represents the spatial variability of the measured mass balances. The number of measurements in each time period is given at the top of the graph. C05i is obtained by spatial interpolation (Cogley, 2005), while DM05 (Dyurgerov and Meier, 2005) and O04 (Ohmura, 2004) are area-weighted global numbers. MB is the arithmetic mean of C05i, DM05 and O04, and its uncertainty (red shading) combines the spatial variability and the structural uncertainty calculated for the 90% confidence level. This does not include uncertainties that derive from uncertainties in the glacier area inventories. The authors performed area weighting and spatial interpolation only after 1960, when up to 100 measured mass balances were available. The most recent period consists of four years only (2000/2001 to 2003/2004).