The document discusses the albedo effect and its impact on climate change. It defines albedo as the extent to which an object reflects light from the sun. Changes in albedo, such as melting snow and ice, can impact global temperatures by reducing the amount of sunlight that is reflected. As snow and ice disappear, less sunlight is reflected and more is absorbed, causing further warming of the Earth's surface and contributing to climate change.

1. The Albedo Effect Impact on global climate change Taslim. Asiah, Shifah, Muid, Walid

3. What is climate change?

4. What is Albedo?

5. Climate Change

6. What is the Albedo effect?

7. Measuring Albedo Levels Example

8. Terrestrial Albedo effects

9. Terrestrial Albedo effect details

10. The disappearing arctic

11. The impact of Albedo effect on climate change

12. Summary

13. Closing thoughts

15. Introduction What is climate change? In simple terms, climate change is an alteration in long term weather patterns due to human activities. What is Albedo? Albedo is defined as the extent or area to which an object diffusely reflects light from the sun, or it is the ratio of light reflected by a planet or satellite. Albedo levels 2003-2004 Note: Albedo is also measured from 0 to 1 on a scale, 0 for no reflecting power and 1 for perfect reflection.

16. Climate Change The life on earth is made possible by the energy of the sun. With so many data and statistics going around about climate change, it can be confusing and rather complicated. Climate change is cause by many factors such as industrial pollution, car pollution, etc. C02 emissions is one of the largest factor of climate change, coming mainly from the burning of fossil fuel. The sun's ray provide the basic sustenance for life on planet earth. For example this energy helps plant's create food which is the primary source of food for all forms of life.

19. When the snow and ice disappears, less sun rays are reflected out and instead the heat is absorbed by land and sea - which causes further increase in the warming.

20. Change to the Earth's Albedo is a powerful driver of climate. When the planet's Albedo or reflectivity increases, more incoming sunlight is reflected back into space.

22. Terrestrial Albedo Effects Trees: Because trees tend to have a low Albedo, removing forests would tend to increase Albedo and thereby could produce localized climate cooling. In seasonally snow-covered zones, winter Albedo of treeless areas are 10% to 50% higher than nearby forested areas because snow does not cover the trees as readily . Snow: Snow Albedo can be as high as 0.9; this, however, is for the ideal example: fresh deep snow over a featureless landscape. If a snow-covered area warms, snow tends to melt, lowering the Albedo, and leading to more snowmelt. Water: Water reflects light very differently from typical terrestrial materials. At the scale of the wavelength of light even wavy water is always smooth so the light is reflected in a locally specular manner. Although the reflectivity of water is very low at low and medium angles of incident light, it increases tremendously at high angles of incident light such as occur on the illuminated side of the Earth near the terminator. However, waviness causes an appreciable reduction. Since the light specularly reflected from water does not usually reach the viewer, water is usually considered to have a very low Albedo in spite of its high reflectivity at high angles of incident light. Clouds: Cloud Albedo is an important factor in the global warming effect. Different types of clouds exhibit different reflectivity. Albedo and climate in some areas are affected by artificial clouds, such as those created by the contrails of heavy commercial airliner. Cited from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albedo

24. This melts the ice and increases the global temperature to a few degrees, when ice melts, it can cause flooding in some areas.

25. Exposed water or exposed land is darker in colour and it absorbs more energy from the sun. When the ice melts, more land is exposed, this absorbs more heat, melting more ice.

26. The snow and ice play a important role. without them the sunlight will not reflect back and temperature will rise causing global warming due to an imbalance of light being reflected and absorbed.Anything white for example snow or ice have a high Albedo level

27. The disappearing ice caps Video - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SxqWgoR5Xrg

29. In order for the earth to have a stable temperature, there has to be a balance between the light being reflected and absorbed.

30. With increasing C02 in our atmosphere more and more heat from the sun's rays are being trapped and due to this we are having an increase in temperature in some countries which is causing the weather patterns to be changed.

31. As we are losing more arctic ice shields we are exposing more soil and earth land which has far less albedo then ice covered land.

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