The albedo of a body or an area, dark or light, would affect the amount of radiation absorbed.
Even a dumb mining engineer can work that out.
If the arctic area was ice free, then of course more radiation would be absorbed by the ocean, and vice versa.
One wonders what could have forced the planet to go into an interglacial period like this one we live in now, when huge areas of the Northern Hemisphere was covered in ice.
I assume the Antarctic area was huge in ice extent as well.
Must have been either an increasing output from the sun or a change in the orbit meaning more radiation hitting the Earth.
Maybe those same forces are still at work?
Maybe they've peaked and it's heading the opposite way to another ice age?
