The Arctic conjures up images of white snow, ice, and polar bears. But this month, the Arctic landscapes ended up looking like a fiction world, with landscapes of pink snow.
Scientists say that the Arctic phenomenon with pink snow is due to a chemical reaction that occurs when sunlight hits algae in the snow.
The pink coloring is caused by algae, which creates an effect that can actually worsen climate change. Though this proves that the world is currently struggling with climate change, this no longer a new discovery.
In 1818, British Admiral Sir John Ross noted that snow sometimes took on pinkish hue at high altitudes.
nineteenth-century explorers thought that the color might come from meteoric iron deposits, but modern scientists already know that it comes from a kind of algae, Chlamydomonas nivalis, which normally appears to be green but turns red when hit by the sun.
The understand more about the pink snow and what it could mean to the Arctic environment, researchers studied snow samples from 16 glaciers in four countries, including Sweden, Greenland, Iceland, and Norway.
The discovery all came down to a property called albedo, or the proportion of light reflected by a surface.
Dark colored objects absorb more light, explaining why darker painted houses feel hotter in the summer time, or why it might be unpleasant to bear black T-shirt in July. The lower an object's albedo number, the more light and heat it absorbs.
With it's darker color, the Arctic algae decreases the albedo of glacial snow significantly.
According to Dr. Stefanie Lutz, the results pointing out that the 'bio-albedo' effect is important and has to be considered in futures climate models."
The sign of rosy snow is also a concern and could create a problematic cycle, in which algae darkens the snow, which leads to melting and runoff, which leads to more algae growth, and so on.
Source: The Christian Science Monitor
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