  The importance of the sea ice retreat in the polar regions for the global
warming and the role of ice-albedo feedback was recognized by various authors
[1,2]. Similar to a recent study of the phenomenon in the Arctic [3] we present
a semi-quantitative estimate of the mechanism for the Southern Hemisphere (SH).
Using a simple model, we estimate the contribution of ice-albedo feedback to
the mean temperature increase in the SH to be 0.5 +/- 0.1 K in the years 1955
to 2015, while from the simultaneous growth of the greenhouse gases (GHG) we
derive a direct warming of only 0.2 +/- 0.05 K in the same period. These
numbers are in nice accordance with the reported mean temperature rise of 0.75
+/- 0.1 K of the SH in 2015 since 1955 (and relative to 1880). Our data also
confirm previously noticed correlations between the annual fluctuations of
solar intensity and El Nino observations on the one hand and the annual
variability of the SH surface temperature on the other hand. Our calculations
indicate a slowing down of the temperature increase during the past few years
that is likely to persist. Assuming a continuation of the present trends for
the southern sea ice and GHG concentration we predict the further temperature
rise to decrease by 33 % in 2015 to 2025 as compared to the previous decade.
