During the Neoproterozoic snowball Earth events, the climate was cold and the oceans were covered by marine ice of ~1000 m thick (sea glacier). Extremely high CO₂ level was required in order to trigger the deglaciation these events. It is unclear how long it would take for the sea-ice cover to be completely ablated after the deglaciation started, and what the physical state of the ocean looked like. Here we use a fully coupled general circulation model, CCSM3, to evaluate the rate of poleward retreating of the marine ice and estimate an upper-bound timescale for the marine deglaciation. It is found that the deglaciation will take at most ~300 to 1500 years, depending on the surface albedo of ice; as the albedo decreases, the deglaciation will be prolonged due to the lower CO₂ level required to start the deglaciation. Such fast calving/melting of sea ice allows a fresh water lid of ~800 m to develop at the end of the deglaciation.

在新元古代雪球地球事件期间，气候寒冷，海洋被约 1000 米厚的海冰（海洋冰川）覆盖。为了触发这些事件的冰川消融，需要极高的 CO _2水平。目前尚不清楚冰川消融开始后海冰覆盖层需要多长时间才能完全消融，以及海洋的物理状态如何。在这里，我们使用完全耦合的大气环流模型 CCSM3 来评估海冰向极地退缩的速率，并估计海洋冰消的上限时间尺度。发现冰川消融最多需要 300 到 1500 年，这取决于冰的表面反照率；_{随着反照率的降低，由于CO 2}较低，冰消期将延长开始消冰期所需的水平。海冰的这种快速崩解/融化允许在冰消结束时形成约 800 m 的淡水盖。