Surface Reflectivity
Sea ice covered with snow reflects about 85-90% of sunlight, while ocean water reflects just 10%. Thus, as sea ice melts, revealing more and more of the ocean beneath, the increasing absorption of solar radiation adds to global warming, which causes more melting, which in turn causes more warming, and so on…
Source: ACIA Impacts of a Warming Arctic: Arctic Climate Impact Assessment 
(2004),
Key Finding #2, p.34
Related publication:
Other Figures & Tables on this publication:
The Earth’s Greenhouse Effect
Observed Arctic Temperature, 1900 to Present
Observed sea ice September 1979 and September 2003
Surface Reflectivity
Projected Vegetation, 2090-2100
Arctic Marine Food Web
Map subregions sub-I
Map subregions sub-II
Map subregions sub-III
Map subregions sub-IV
Arctic Thermohaline Circulation
Carbon cycle in the Arctic
Projected Arctic Surface Air Temperatures
Freshwater food web
Projected opening of northern navigation routes
Factors influencing UV at the surface
1000 years of changes in carbon emissions
People of the Arctic
Projected Surface Air Temperature change 1990-2090
Melt of the Greenland Ice Sheet
An ice primer
Spruce Bark Beetle
Spruce Budworm
Peary Caribou
The Porcupine Caribou Herd
The Gwich’in and the Porcupine Caribou Herd
A permafrost primer
Seals Become Elusive for Inuit in Nunavut
Observed Climate Change Impacts in Sachs Harbour, Canada
Indigenous knowledge and observations of current trends
Case study of interacting changes: Saami reindeer herders
Indigenous knowledge and observations of current trends
Indigenous knowledge and observations of current trends
Indigenous knowledge and observations of current trends
Footnotes
