How Does Snow Keep Our Planet Cool? Snow doesn’t just feel cold - it helps regulate Earth’s temperature through a property called albedo. Albedo measures how much sunlight a surface reflects, and snow has one of the highest albedos of any natural material, reflecting up to 90% of incoming solar radiation. This means that vast snowy areas, like the Arctic tundra or mountain glaciers, act like giant mirrors, bouncing sunlight back into space and keeping the planet cooler. But when snow and ice mel