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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…

Surface Reflectivity

Source: ACIA Impacts of a Warming Arctic: Arctic Climate Impact Assessment  (2004),
 Key Finding #2, p.34

Related publication:
Arctic Climate Change homeArctic Climate Change
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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