Notes on a catastrophe: A feedback analysis of snowball earth

Abstract

The language of feedbacks is ubiquitous in contemporary earth sciences, and the framework of feedback analysis is a powerful tool for diagnosing the relative strengths of the myriad mutual interactions that occur in complex dynamical systems. The ice albedo feedback is widely taught as the classic example of a climate feedback. Moreover, its potential to initiate a collapse to a completely glaciated snowball earth is widely taught as the classic example of a climate "tipping point." A feedback analysis of the snowball earth phenomenon in simple, zonal mean energy balance models clearly reveals the physics of the snowball instability and its dependence on climate parameters. The analysis can also be used to illustrate some fundamental properties of climate feedbacks: how feedback strength changes as a function of mean climate state; how small changes in individual feedbacks can cause large changes in the system sensitivity; and last, how the strength and even the sign of the feedback is dependent on the climate variable in question. © 2010 American Meteorological Society.