varsaku
Registered User
http://www.pulseheadlines.com/red-snow-important-role-melting-glaciers/37476/
When summer arrives, the melting produces a blooming environment for large communities of algae. Even though this are commonly green, the sun exposure creates the red color that combines it with the surrounding snow.
This addition to the usually white snow, darkens it, allowing it to heat up faster and melt more quickly, researchers noted in the paper. The team estimated that the overall decrease in snow albedo, the proportion of the incident light or radiation that is reflected by a surface, over the course of one snow season is about 13 percent.
For the study, the team analyzed 40 samples of snow from four locations and compared the red ones with clean white snow over the course of an Arctic melt season. Then they determined that the red one melted considerably faster than the clean one.
