MOST OF US HAVE SEEN BLUE ICE but what about pink ice? The headline of the article that attracted spurred me on to write this article is “Algae turns Italian Alps pink, prompting concerns over melting.” It appears on The Guardian website and was contributed by Agence France-Press (July 5, 2020). It’s followed by this sub-headline: “Pink snow observed on parts of the Presena glacier believed to be caused by plant that makes the ice darker, causing it to melt faster.”
The article states that scientists are investigating the mysterious appearance of pink glacial ice in the Alps, caused by algae that accelerate the effects of climate change. The alga is not dangerous [and] is a natural phenomenon that occurs during the spring and summer periods in the middle latitudes but also at the Poles.
Normally ice reflects more than 80% of the sun’s radiation back into the atmosphere, but as algae appear, they darken the ice so that it absorbs the heat and melts more quickly.
Everything that darkens the snow causes it to melt because it accelerates the absorption of radiation, [including] the presence of hikers and ski lifts could also have an impact on the algae.
To read this article in its entirety, click HERE.
Mystically liberal Virgo enjoys long walks alone in the city at night in the rain with an umbrella and a flask of 10-year-old Laphroaig who strives to live by the maxim, “It ain’t what you know that gets you into trouble; it’s what you know that just ain’t so.
I’ve been a puppet, a pauper, a pirate, a poet, a pawn, and a college dropout (twice!). Occupationally, I have been a bartender, jewelry engraver, bouncer, landscape artist, and FEMA crew chief following the Great Flood of ’72 (and that was a job that I should never, ever have left).
I am also the final author of the original O’Sullivan Woodside price guides for record collectors and the original author of the Goldmine price guides for record collectors. As such, I was often referred to as the Price Guide Guru, and—as everyone should know—it behooves one to heed the words of a guru. (Unless, of course, you’re the Beatles.)