Sunbeams two-step over white blankets
Gliding painlessly between worlds,
Then stray too close to the edge
Where looming Arctic waves
Trap their latent heat;
Ending the dance,
And leaving
Only
Sea.
Melt Ponds on Arctic Sea Ice (Photo Credit: Kai Boggild; distributed via imaggeo.egu.eu).
This is a nonet, inspired by recent research that has provided the first quantitative evidence for the “albedo feedback” effect in the Arctic.
It has previously been predicted that summer ice cover in the Arctic Ocean might disappear by the year 2050, with the ice-ocean “albedo feedback” recently emerging as a potential cause for such a disaster. The albedo of a surface is a measure of how