Recently discovered Dark Snow, which stretches on glaciers from the Himalayas to the Artic, is a possible reason that polar ice is melting.
The dark snow, which consists of a fine dust of bare soil, soot from fires, and fine carbon particles from industry and diesel engines (along with the fires?) is blown onto the glaciers, forming a sort of dark crust that holds the suns heat.
To me, this seems a more plausible explanation of why there tends to be melting of polar ice caps from time to time. Perhaps there's more of this stuff on glaciers on a windy day?
Anyways, here's the article...
Dark snow: from the Arctic to the Himalayas, the phenomenon that is accelerating glacier melting | Environment | The Observer
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