Dark Ice: Why Is Greenland Melting Faster Than Anyone Expected?

Basically, the Albedo effect is the opposite of the Greenhouse effect. While the Greenhouse effect 'traps' the energy of the sun here on Earth, Albedo reflects it back to space. And it's ice and snow, two extremely reflective substances, abundant on Earth's surface, that do the job. Their white surface acts like a mirror.

In this excellent article, Eli Kintisch follows a group of researchers to Greenland in order to solve a mystery: Why has the Greenland melt suddenly changed from calving (a disappearance of inland glaciers) to surface melt?

The ice sheet has entered a feedback loop that makes it darker and darker, causing it to reflect less (and absorb more) sunlight. Bacteria and algae taking advantage of higher overall temperatures stain the ice black, and faster melt brings to the surface ancient soot from European factories and Canadian wildfires. These are just some of the reasons proposed by the team.

We are in a state of emergency, and understanding the conundrum we're in will help us adapt and cope with its consequences. It's as terrifying as this sentence: "It's urgent to figure out why, and how the melting might evolve in the future, because Greenland holds the equivalent of more than 7 m of sea level rise in its thick mantle of ice."