The increasing amount of snow blood is worrying scientists. They are becoming more predominant than ever in the summer and accelerating snow melt.
What is snow blood? Why is it a threat to the climate?
‘Snow blood’ are algae first described in the third century BC by Aristotle. However, in 2019, they formally identified and named Sanguina nivaloides. Also called the pink snow and watermelon snow, scientists are racing to better understand the algae before it is too late. Huge volumes of snow are falling with the rising global temperature. The phenomenon is hitting the Alps disproportionately hard.
“When it’s in the snow, it accumulates a pigment, like a sunscreen to protect itself from the light intensity. Like us, when we go skiing, or even here, today, we are getting sunburnt and we use sunscreen. The algae, to protect themselves, well we think it’s for this because we don’t have the proof yet, accumulate this red pigment that overcomes the green. So they are fundamentally green, but it’s hidden behind a big shield of red pigments,” explained Eric Marechal. Marechal is a research director at the Scientific Research National Center in Grenoble. He and his teammates are collecting samples from Le Brevent mountain.
Why are researchers rushing to study this?
“There are two reasons for studying the algae. The first is that it is an area that is little explored, and the second reason is that this little-explored area is melting before our eyes. So it’s kind of urgent, we have to quickly deploy means to collect samples, this is what we are doing today, and then study them with all the modern means that exist in biology,” stated the researcher.
Additionally, scientists including Alberto Amato believe volumes of snow blood appear to be increasing due to climate change. Higher amounts of carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere are also favoring algal blooms. Amato is a genetic engineering researcher from CEA Centre de Grenoble. Moreover, with the spread of this algae, glaciers and snow melting will increase worldwide. “The warmer it is, the more algae there are and the more the snow melts quickly. It’s a vicious circle and we are trying to understand all the mechanisms to understand this circle so we can try to do something about it,” stated Amato.