Azerbaijan National Academy of Sciences

Scientists have announced a new ecosystem on the Antarctic Peninsula. Algae blooms on the surface of the melting snow, turning the ice green, and potentially creating a food source for other species of organisms.

The British team behind the study believes that these “flowers” ​​will expand their assortment in the future, because global warming creates more and more conditions necessary for their development. In some areas, unicellular life forms are so densely “settled” with each other that they turn white snow into bright green and can even be seen from space.

For six years, biologists measured green snow algae using satellite data and ground-based observations. The result of their work is the first large-scale map of the algae of the peninsula, which will be used as a baseline to assess the speed with which the white continent turns green.

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