Absorption of solar energy in contaminated sea ice depends not only on contaminant concentrations but also on the way contaminants are distributed in the ice. We used an analytical model of short-wave radiative transfer in a dirty melt pond to calculate solar energy absorption by contaminants for two cases: (1) contaminants are aggregated sparsely in cryoconite holes within the pond and (2) contaminants are uniformly distributed on the pond bottom. We found that the concentration of contaminants in the holes may result in an enhanced solar energy absorption and the total energy absorbed by the contaminants can exceed the incident irradiance. For particular wavelengths in the visible, the absorbed energy can be as large as 270% of the incident spectral irradiance. The cryoconite hole depths should reach an equilibrium when the hole deepening rate matches the ablation rate of the pond bottom. Based on a pure radiative melting criterion, we estimate equilibrium values between 0.15 and 0.4 m for a typical pond of 0.3 m depth. ¿ American Geophysical Union 1996