Arctic climate: Ice albedo feedback

It can be seen already through these short explanations that there are many feedback mechanism between the different media. One of the most important feedback mechanism for arctic climate is the Ice-Albedo Feedback. This mechanism arises from the fact that different materials act differnt in absorbing or reflecting radiation, which comes from the sun. The dark ocean absords realtively much radiation whereas the light ice surface reflects most of it. When solar radiation is absorbed, it’s energy is taken into the medium and it is actually heated, ahile when the radiation is reflected all the energy is “send back” and no heating will take place.

Now we come to the positive feedback: when more ice is melted, the light ice surface is replaced by dark ocean, which absorbs more energy and is heated more. This will again make the ice melt faster due to the higher temperatures, and so even more ice is replaced by ocean... Such an feedback can amplify the effect of a small warming very fast!