Last winter’s record snowfall is heating up, baking under the sunlight and turning hues of red.
The technicolour snow appears in high-altitude environments throughout the globe including the French Alps and Japan’s Mountains of Dewa when a perfect storm of conditions–water content, sunlight, temperatures and the presence of nutrients–awaken dormant green algae called chlamydomonas nivalis that thrive in cold temperatures. The algae swim to the surface of the snow, where they bloom and divide.
“They need some kind of pigmentation to prevent damage related to the high-UV of the environment they’re in. So they produce the secondary pigment largely for that purpose to protect themselves,” he said. Though snow becoming water makes it available to nourish the algae, the exposure of bare ground changes how much light is reflected versus absorbed. Darker colours absorb more sunlight, turning snow banks and glaciers into liquid more quickly.Article content
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