Fossil fuel combustion creates carbon emissions that increase atmospheric thickness, warming climate. The occurrence of wildfire increases with climate warming, increasing soot loading of the atmosphere. Some of this soot is transported through the atmosphere and is deposited on glaciers, lowering their reflectivity, increasing solar energy absorption, increasing melt rates. Industrial activity including shipping also increases soot content of the atmosphere, eventually darkening snow and ice surfaces. The loss of snow and ice cover exposes a dark underlying surface, leading to more solar energy absorption, more warming, and more ice loss. These multiplying effects are called the “albedo feedback”.

The Rolling Stone article includes: “in a vicious feedback loop, soot from the wild?res raging in Colorado and Siberia – themselves spurred by climate change – may be helping to darken the surface of the ice.”