what natural phenomena might cause the Earth's albedo to increase? Give several examples
what natural phenomena might cause the Earth's albedo to increase? Give several examples
Earth gets the sun's radiation, albedo is the amount of radiation that is reflected back to the atmosphere without being absorbed by earth's surface. Albedo is another name for reflectivity. The albedo of a surface determines how much sunlight will be absorbed and warm the surface compared to another surface that reflects most of the light and does not change temperature. The amount of energy that is reflected by a surface is determined by the reflectivity of that surface, called the albedo. A high albedo means the surface reflects the majority of the radiation that hits it and absorbs the rest. A low albedo means a surface reflects a small amount of the incoming radiation and absorbs the rest.
In simple terms albedo is a measure of reflectivity, dark surfaces absorb more energy from the Sun, the lighter ones reflect it back into space. Simple energy balance models of the climate system are unstable to small changes in the amount of energy reflected to space. It is also speculated that albedo changes potentially regulate the climate system. The reflection of sunlight by clouds provides an important climate change feedback mechanism. It has also been conjectured that the characteristics of the total energy transport from low to high latitudes are insensitive to the structure and dynamics of the atmosphere-ocean system and are determined primarily by external controls such as the solar constant, the size of the Earth, the tilt of the Earth’s axis, and the hemispheric mean albedo.
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