, a team led by researchers from the UC Irvine Department of Earth System Science and the University of Michigan Department of Climate and Space Sciences and Engineering reveal how a climate model commonly used by geoscientists currently overestimates a key physical property of Earth's climate system called albedo, which is the degree to which ice reflects planet-warming sunlight into space.
Those properties include the effects things like algae and dust have on albedo. Dark-colored algae and dust can make snow and ice less reflective and less able to reflect sunlight. Clarke hopes her team's study stresses the importance of the seemingly minuscule properties that can have far-reaching consequences for the overall climate."I think our work is going to help models do a much better job of helping us capture snow and ice-related climate feedbacks," she said.