Q.What is Albedo effect ? Write its effects.

Albedo is the reflectivity of a surface to sunlight; falling albedo (as bright ice/snow melts to reveal darker land/ocean) creates a self-reinforcing feedback loop that accelerates global warming.

Albedo refers to the proportion of incident solar radiation that a given surface reflects back, rather than absorbing, usually expressed as a percentage or a fraction between 0 (a perfectly absorbing black surface) and 1 (a perfectly reflecting white surface). Different Earth surfaces have very different albedo values: fresh snow and ice have a very high albedo (commonly 70-90%), reflecting most incoming sunlight back to space; whereas darker surfaces such as forests, bare soil, and especially the open ocean have a low albedo (often below 10%), absorbing most of the incoming solar energy and converting it to heat.

Effects of the albedo (ice-albedo feedback) effect:

• As global temperatures rise, polar ice caps, glaciers, and seasonal snow cover shrink, exposing the darker land surface or open ocean water that lay beneath.
• Because this newly-exposed surface has a much lower albedo than the ice/snow it replaced, it absorbs significantly more solar radiation than before, warming further. …