Earth’s a disco Ball : here’s what it means

Small silver squares on a ball, in a dark room, notorious for lighting up the room with sparkling lights, the disco ball. The star of the seventies emulates the planet we call home. Not because of the inequality of the seventies where some were dancing away in bell bottom trousers in a nightclub whilst others were suffering as economies were busting more than booming. Instead the Earth is like this mirror ball in a physical sense, because just like the disco ball, the Earth reflects light from the sun. The amount of sunlight different parts of the Earth reflects is defined as an albedo. Which is often a disregarded yet crucial aspect of the enhanced greenhouse effect. 

Small silver squares on a ball, in a dark room, notorious for lighting up the room with sparkling lights, the disco ball. The star of the seventies emulates the planet we call home. The Earth is like this mirror ball in a physical sense, because just like the disco ball, the Earth reflects light from the sun. The amount of sunlight different parts of the Earth reflects is defined as the albedo effect. Which is often a disregarded yet crucial aspect of the enhanced greenhouse effect. 

The determining factors of an albedo is the topography, surface and sun angle. The word ‘Albedo’ is derived from the latin word for white. Surfaces that are white reflect more light and vice versa with dark surfaces absorb more light and thus reflect less. The albedo of a surface is based on a scale from 0 to 1. 0 and lower end figures indicate a small albedo, meaning the surface is more absorbent than reflective and vice versa. 

Albedo scale - infographic by Elena Roberts

But why is the albedo important? Let’s look at the white ice caps in the arctic and antarctic circles that have a high albedo, meaning that they reflect sunlight, this sunlight is also a heat source so they are also reflecting heat back into the atmosphere. This helps in regulating global temperature. However as global temperatures increase so do sea temperatures, these factors cause ice caps to melt, which then causes the albedo to decrease, and thus global temperatures to rise. This is a negative feedback loop.

I will focus on the many other implications of melting ice caps in upcoming articles, we are just tackling one problem at a time.

Negative feedback loop for melting ice caps and albedo effect - infographic by Elena Roberts

There are a few solutions to the decreasing global albedo problem, one of them taking inspiration from the seventies disco ball by putting diamond dust in the sky. 

The diamond dust would be ejected in the atmosphere and reflect solar radiation, thus cooling down the planet. The research was done by S. Vattioni and S. K. Käslin, and the Geophysical research paper is called ‘Microphysical Interactions Determine the Effectiveness of Solar Radiation Modification via Stratospheric Solid Particle Injection’. However the simplified explanation of this theory is illustrated through the video by NASA linked below. The only obvious flaw to diamond dust is the cost - roughly 200 trillion USD! 

https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2024GL110575

The Geophysical research letter linked above^

What do you think? What other changes to Earth’s albedo have occurred? Can you think of any solutions?