The summer extent of the Arctic sea-ice cover has decreased in recent decades and there have been alterations in the timing and duration of the summer melt season. These changes in ice conditions have altered the partitioning of solar radiation in the Arctic atmosphere–ice–ocean system. The impact of sea-ice changes on solar partitioning is examined on a pan-Arctic scale using a 25 km × 25 km Equal Area Scalable Earth Grid for the years 1979–2008. Daily values of incident solar irradiance are obtained from ERA-40 reanalysis products and ice concentrations are determined from passive microwave satellite data. The albedo of the ice is modeled by a five-phase process that includes dry snow, melting snow, melt-pond formation, melt-pond evolution, and freeze-up. The timing of these phases is governed by the onset dates of summer melt and fall freeze-up, which are determined from satellite observations. Results indicate a general trend of increasing solar heat input to the Arctic ice–ocean system due to albedo changes induced by reductions in ice concentration and longer melt seasons. The evolution of albedo, and hence the total solar heating of the ocean, is more sensitive to the date of melt onset than the date of fall freeze-up. The largest increases in total annual solar heat input, averaging as much as 4% per year, occurred in the Chukchi Sea region. In the summer of 2007, there was an extraordinarily large amount of ice bottom melting observed in the Beaufort Sea region. An increase in the open-water fraction resulted in a 500% positive anomaly in solar heat input to the upper ocean. The melting in the Beaufort Sea has elements of a classic ice-albedo feedback signature: more open water causes more solar heat absorbed, resulting in more melting and more open water.