Comments on “Global mass and energy requirements for glacial oscillations and their implications for mean ocean temperature oscillations”

The article by Saltzman (1977) in a recent issue of Tellus presents a number of interesting problems. Saltzman assumes that the latent heat of fusion released during the growth of the Würm/Wisconsin continental ice-sheets was absorbed by the oceans, since there might be radiative balance at the top of the atmosphere. It is not clear from his article as to why some or all of this additional latent heat should not be radiated directly to space. This would seem likely since the additional energy will be released by the formation of snow in low/medium level clouds near or over the ice sheets, and these clouds are already radiating to space.