Comments on: Ice-Albedo Feedback, and Temperature Bifurcation Structure http://climatephys.org/2012/06/03/ice-albedo/ Sun, 19 May 2013 15:11:37 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.com/ By: Chris Colose http://climatephys.org/2012/06/03/ice-albedo/comment-page-1/#comment-9 Sat, 09 Jun 2012 19:34:14 +0000 http://climatephys.org/?p=68#comment-9 Jeff- You’re absolutely right that the ocean albedo is a function of solar zenith (and also wind speed, which “tilts” the ocean surface) and a number of atmospheric effects. There are a couple of papers I’m aware of that discuss these dependencies (Cogley 1979; Jin et al., 2004, I’m sure there are many more, for example from field campaign measurements) in addition to a number of studies on the ice-albedo feedback itself. To some extent, snow/ice have some of these dependencies as well, but it is almost a universal phenomena that replacing those surfaces with ocean or melt water will decrease the local surface albedo. This is especially true in the warm months, where there is the most sunshine at the high latitudes. And from a “Snowball” perspective, once the surface-albedo changes start to become very important at low latitudes, it will matter more from a global energy budget perspective.

]]> By: Jeff Guinn http://climatephys.org/2012/06/03/ice-albedo/comment-page-1/#comment-8 Sat, 09 Jun 2012 07:25:05 +0000 http://climatephys.org/?p=68#comment-8 Maybe I missed it somewhere, but the albedo of water varies with the angle of incidence.

IIRC, at latitudes greater than 60 degrees, the albedo of water starts exceeding snow.

Therefore, if one was to assume a completely water covered planet, the albedo without ice, and ice beyond 60 degrees, would be roughly the same.

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