On: We Have Four Years to Save Ourselves from Climate Change, Harvard Scientist Says

[dagss]

So warming is global and when there is night at one place, then that is because there is daytime somewhere else.

Yes, if you can just shut off the sun for some time, we can definitely easily overcome global warming... ...

[challenger22 → dagss]

You didn't make an effort to charitably interpret my question. My question is essentially about whether transient response to changes in albedo occur primarily over the course of days or primarily over the course of years.

Albedo is important, being snide is not.

[mcv → challenger22]

The impact of albedo on this process can go either way. On the one hand, melting ice caps and higher temperatures can mean less ground covered in ice and snow, therefore lower albedo and temperature will rise even faster.

But warmer seas can also mean more evaporation, more precipitation and therefore more snow, higher albedo and a brake on rising temperatures, possibly even a new ice age. (It gets mentioned sometimes; an ice age is ironically a potential result of global warming.)

But it seems to me that effect will mostly be limited to higher latitudes. There's not a lot of snow around the equator, which receives the most sunlight.

But if we could somehow increase the Earth's albedo on a large scale, then that would absolutely have an impact.