How to Use albedo in a Sentence

albedo

noun
  • His best guess is that sea ice, or rather the lack of it, played a big role, thanks to something called the albedo effect.
    Kendall Powell, Discover Magazine, 26 Feb. 2015
  • But when the ice melts, dark water with a low albedo is exposed.
    Tom Yulsman, Discover Magazine, 22 Feb. 2014
  • The more reflective a surface is, the higher the surface’s albedo.
    Isabella Fertel, USA TODAY, 30 May 2023
  • On the other hand, if dry air from above the cloud mixes in (entrainment), the cloud may produce rain and have a lower albedo.
    Kate Murphy, IEEE Spectrum, 7 Sep. 2021
  • The researchers found no correlation, which means that changes in Earth’s albedo is caused by something on the Earth.
    Jamie Carter, Forbes, 6 Dec. 2021
  • The albedo of Venus is close to .7, meaning its thick cloud covering reflects about 70% of the light striking it back into space.
    Kristen Rogers, CNN, 27 Feb. 2020
  • Permafrost and loss of albedo are the only two feedbacks with cost estimates at this point.
    Stephen Leahy, National Geographic, 23 Apr. 2019
  • Red snow means lower albedo, which means more absorbed sunlight and faster snowmelt.
    Kylie Mohr, WIRED, 10 Dec. 2022
  • The idea is that the coating changes the amount of sunlight the asteroid reflects, its albedo, creating a thrust that redirects it.
    The Physics Arxiv Blog, Discover Magazine, 10 Dec. 2021
  • The scientists used the device to record the snow’s albedo, a measure of what fraction of the sunlight beaming down is reflected back up.
    Kylie Mohr, WIRED, 10 Dec. 2022
  • Less sea ice coverage also means that less sunlight will be reflected off the surface of the ocean in a process known as the albedo effect.
    Washington Post, 27 July 2017
  • The albedo effect is particularly acute in the summer, when the Arctic is bathed in 24 hours of sunlight.
    Matt Simon, Wired, 7 Apr. 2021
  • Normally, bright white snow has a very high albedo, meaning much of the sunlight that hits the surface gets reflected away.
    Margaret Osborne, Smithsonian Magazine, 5 Jan. 2023
  • The second example shows a layered view, using the albedo and a shaded render.
    Jennifer Ouellette, Ars Technica, 21 Feb. 2023
  • Anthropogenic warming causes snow and ice caps to melt, which can make Earth’s albedo decrease.
    Maddie Bender, Scientific American, 18 June 2021
  • But could that light curve have instead been produced by a more rounded object with a nonuniform albedo?
    Scientific American, 26 Jan. 2021
  • This makes the reflectiveness, or albedo, different from the regions around it.
    Cyrus Farivar, WIRED, 5 June 2007
  • With an average albedo of 4.4 percent, Bennu is one of the darkest objects in the Solar System.
    Eric Berger, Ars Technica, 20 Mar. 2020
  • The unknown absorbers seem to play a role in this process by affecting the planet’s albedo, or how much energy is reflected back to space.
    Erica Naone, Discover Magazine, 29 Aug. 2019
  • Further complicating these feedback loops, more shrubs in turn make for a warmer Arctic thanks to the decreasing reflectance of the landscape, or its albedo.
    Matt Simon, Wired, 7 Apr. 2021
  • In summer, owing to the albedo effect—light surfaces reflect heat, dark ones absorb it—the pale grass would stay cooler than the brown shrubs that currently blanket the tundra.
    Joshua Yaffa, The New Yorker, 10 Jan. 2022
  • This amount of carbon didn’t have much of an impact on the ice sheet’s overall albedo, or reflectivity, Stohl and Evangeliou said.
    Megan Gannon, Scientific American, 14 Apr. 2018
  • That is a concern for a variety of reasons: a loss of habitat for Arctic creatures and a decline in the albedo effect, which is when ice reflects sunlight back into space.
    Scott Dance, Anchorage Daily News, 15 Mar. 2023
  • The camera also maintains albedo, displacement, and normal map that are render-ready.
    Valentina Palladino, Ars Technica, 8 Jan. 2018
  • Less sea ice means the planet's reflectivity (what scientists call albedo) declines and our planet absorbs more heat from the sun.
    David Freeman, NBC News, 9 May 2017
  • Eventually, Hooks found some Russian materials from the 1920s that, in pure mathematics, described the albedo of the Moon.
    Eric Berger, Ars Technica, 19 July 2019
  • The relative reflectivity of a surface is known as its albedo.
    Betsy Mason, National Geographic, 8 Jan. 2017
  • There will be more opportunities to contribute to albedo measurements in the future.
    The Intersection, Discover Magazine, 5 Aug. 2011
  • The color of the snow can make a difference, as even a light dusting can reset the snow’s albedo, or measure of whiteness, which helps reflect solar radiation and prevent melting, Rizzardo said.
    Hayley Smith, Los Angeles Times, 5 Apr. 2023
  • A thermal emissions detector produced a map of the planet’s albedo, or the brightness of the light reflected from its surface, which is basically what early astronomers were mapping with their telescopes.
    Betsy Mason, National Geographic, 19 Oct. 2016

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'albedo.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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