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Someone else in this thread thought differently saying : "It's gotten brighter over even just the last 20 million years. The ice caps helped reflect nearly .39
by modo_mario 4y ago
Someone else in this thread thought differently saying : "It's gotten brighter over even just the last 20 million years. The ice caps helped reflect nearly .39 of it, but soot and melting are lowering that. It's called albedo and that loss will dwarf the CO2 Heat trapping."
Similarly I found that in the geologically recent past, the ice–albedo positive feedback has played a major role in the advances and retreats of the Pleistocene (~2.6 Ma to ~10 ka ago) ice sheets and that the ice at the arctic is in fact not that negligible given the loss of it in relation to the much higher warming at the poles.
To what extent do you believe clouds contribute?
- marcus_holmes 4y agoOver a timescale of 20 million years there'll be Ice Ages when a significant portion of the planet is covered in ice, so I can see how that will affect albedo then. As I understand it, the extent of cloud cover affecting the planet's albedo (and whether that offsets the warming from the greenhouse effect from water vapour) is still an open question in meteorology. I'm absolutely not an expert on any of this - I was genuinely asking the question out of interest.