Snow cover in the mountains of Italy was painted in pink color
Freeze video La Repubblica / Youtube.com
The overall conclusions of ecologists and climatologists disappointing. The Presena glacier is melting is not the first year, and excessive growth of algae may become the “last nail in the coffin,” the newspaper notes Naked Science
nature.com
The melting of glaciers and ice sheets is now considered a symbol of climate change. It involves many complex mechanisms, and among these processes the attention of the scientific community recently attracted the darkening of the glacier surface due to organic material.
In the Italian Alps have been amazing for these places phenomenon. In some areas (e.g., glacier Gavia pass at the height of 2618 meters above sea level and partly on the Presena glacier) snow was pink. In the painting, blame the algae Ancylonema nordenskioeldii. This species has never been quantitatively documented in the Alps, it is dominated by the algae bloom on the ice cover of Greenland, the article by Italian scientists in the journal Scientific Reports.
In Greenland this seaweed is mostly found in the so-called “dark zone” on the West of the island, where there is massive melting of ice. According to the researchers, it is not a coincidence. Usually white snow and ice reflect about 80% of solar radiation. Any color change, including because of the algae, enhance the absorptive capacity of the snow cover and accelerates the melting, reports BBC News.
“All that darkens the snow, melts it,” – says the expert of Department of Earth Sciences, University of Milan Biagio di Mauro, who investigated a new phenomenon on the glacier Mortars in Switzerland. There arises feedback: thawing promotes the growth of algae, improving their supply of water and air. Thus scientists do not exclude connection between the proliferation of algae and the presence of glaciers pedestrians and the ski lifts.
Tourists on the glacier Gavia pass grieving about climate change. “Planet overheating is a big problem, we only algae was not enough, – says Martha Durant. – I’m afraid the damage is irreversible. We have already passed the point of no return”.
The overall conclusions of ecologists and climatologists disappointing. The Presena glacier is melting is not the first year, and excessive growth of algae may become the “last nail in the coffin,” the newspaper notes Naked Science.
#Snow #algae sampling at Presena #glacier
📷: @22n23 pic.twitter.com/DtmkaAgElR— Biagio Di Mauro (@DiMauro_b) July 6, 2020
Ice Algae turns pink in Italian Alps, accelerating loss of glaciers.
Normally ice reflects about 80% of the sun’s radiation back into the atmosphere, but the algae darkens the ice causing it to absorb the heat and melt more quicklyhttps://t.co/r4YoEgMqar
📸 Miguel Medina pic.twitter.com/HR5ffI17wa— AFP news agency (@AFP) July 6, 2020
Similar phenomena occur in many regions of the world. For example, this year the media and social networks has attracted the attention of news about crimson snow is on the Ukrainian Antarctic base “Akademik Vernadsky” and green snow along the coast of the Antarctic Peninsula. This painting also caused an algae bloom caused by warming.