Why the Arctic is Warming Faster than the Rest of the Planet Bad news for the new year. It looks like not only is Earth’s climate continuing to warm, but the arctic regions are warming at twice the rate of the rest of the planet. At first blush, this seems unlikely. I mean, there aren’t walls separating one region from another. And, as much as we may like to try to stop it, air and water flow over, under, and through national borders all the time. Why shouldn’t the warming be spread evenly over the whole world? The answer comes in what is basically an extension of something most people learn in elementary school science. It has to do with light and how that light interacts with stuff. Different wavelengths of visible light correspond with different colors. For example, if you see a green plant, that means that the plant is absorbing all wavelengths of light except green. Green is reflected back, and that is what we see. Black and white are a little different, but it’s the same concept. Black is really the absence of light. Things that appear black are absorbing most of the light that hits it. White is just the opposite. White is all colors; things that appear white are reflecting most of the light back. The amount of light reflected from a surface without being absorbed is called the albedo. The more light or energy is absorbed, the lower the albedo. As you might guess, a dark surface has a low albedo and a light surface will have a high albedo. It turns out that this concept is important for determining the effects of climate change.
Posted on: Mon, 12 Jan 2015 20:32:33 +0000
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