Sentences with phrase «dark ocean surface»

As the sea ice melts, its white reflective surface is replaced by a relatively dark ocean surface.

As dark ocean surfaces absorb more light than white ice surfaces, solar heat input through the open water melts sea ice, increasing both open water areas and heat input and thus accelerating sea ice melt.

As sea - ice melts, it exposes a much darker ocean surface, which absorbs more radiation — amplifying the warming.

But at breaks in the cloud deck, smoke has the opposite effect: It is brighter than the dark ocean surface, reflecting solar radiation and reducing warming.

«It's fairly intuitive to expect that replacing white, reflective sea ice with a dark ocean surface would increase the amount of solar heating,» said Pistone.

Since the darker ocean surface absorbs more sunlight than the bright ice, this warms the region even further.

In the polar regions, where few such storms occur, heating by greenhouse gases remains at the surface, and is exacerbated by the melting of bright sea ice that exposes more of the dark ocean surface and causes more sunlight to be absorbed.

When Arctic sea ice melts, for instance, it exposes a dark ocean surface that absorbs more sunlight than the ice, warming the region's frigid waters and accelerating the melting.

As sea ice melts in the summer, it exposes the dark ocean surface.