While first puzzling naturalist contemporaries of Aristotle and fairly a common occurrence in Alpine and arctic coast regions during the summer, the phenomenon caused by a type of cryophilic (cold-loving) green algae—sometimes referred to by the above as the blooms can express in green, red and pink—is spreading due to global warming to Siberia and the Antarctic, raising the possibility of the rise of new and unpredictable ecosystems.
Called
Chlamydomonas nivlais is a liminal organism, thriving at temperatures hovering around the freezing point and have recently been attracting more notice of climate modellers, since while providing an additional energy source in extreme but thawing areas and act as a sink for carbon dioxide, their suspected role in lowering albedo at the poles—that is, the ability of the surface to reflect solar heat back out into space since the snow is less white, may counteract or accelerate any greenhouse gas offset.
