"The melting of the Arctic and Antarctic ice
caps reduces the fraction of solar energy reflected back into space,
and so increases the temperature further."
Is my assumption correct that there is an asymmetry in that the increase
in the radiation from the de-iced caps and the the iced caps' reflection
of solar radiation. Without an atmosphere they would be equal?
bc
"The danger is that global warming may become self-sustaining, if it
has not done so already. The melting of the Arctic and Antarctic ice
caps reduces the fraction of solar energy reflected back into space,
and so increases the temperature further. Climate change may kill off
the Amazon and other rain forests, and so eliminate once one of the
main ways in which carbon dioxide is removed from the atmosphere. The
rise in sea temperature may trigger the release of large quantities of
carbon dioxide, trapped as hydrides on the ocean floor. Both these
phenomena would increase the greenhouse effect, and so global warming
further. We have to reverse global warming urgently, if we still can."
Physicist Stephen Hawking