3 ms·

This isn't news...the albedo effect and its implications are long understood.

• gt565k 7y ago
  Yup. Learned about it in EAS (Earth and Atmospheric Sciences) college intro lab course. The planet will heal itself and purge us all through a few thousand / million years. The planet will be just fine, humanity as species though, will probably have to adapt and migrate.
• tzs 7y ago
  The news is not the albedo effect and its implications. The news is that the researchers determined which of four factors that were thought to contribute to reduced albedo were actually doing so and which were not. In particular, as noted in the article: > Within the scientific community, there had been a considerable level of debate over the role of soot blowing up from urban areas to the Arctic. One view was that it played a significant role in the reduction of the albedo effect in the Arctic because the dark soot would absorb more sunlight, thus increasing warming. The researchers determined that this soot only had a minimal effect. Of the factors that did affect albedo, > They found that sea-ice, snow on top of sea-ice and ice on land contributed equally to the region's albedo effect