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posted by on Sunday April 02 2017, @04:28PM   Printer-friendly
from the visit-the-scenic-algae-blooms-of-Antartica dept.

When spring arrives in the Arctic, both snow and sea ice melt, forming melt ponds on the surface of the sea ice. Every year, as global warming increases, there are more and larger melt ponds.

Melt ponds provide more light and heat for the ice and the underlying water, but now it turns out that they may also have a more direct and potentially important influence on life in the Arctic waters.

Mats of algae and bacteria can evolve in the melt ponds, which can provide food for marine creatures. This is the conclusion of researchers in the periodical, Polar Biology.

More information:
Heidi Louise Sørensen et al. Nutrient availability limits biological production in Arctic sea ice melt ponds, Polar Biology (2017). DOI: 10.1007/s00300-017-2082-7


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  • (Score: 2) by fritsd on Monday April 03 2017, @12:05PM

    by fritsd (4586) on Monday April 03 2017, @12:05PM (#488167) Journal

    Even if we buy that, it still means that we should be seeing significant effect now rather than two orders of magnitude less. The last few decades should be enough to see a significant effect, not some convenient far future.

    Maybe at the moment we're seeing the tail-end of the effect upto the Rococo period [wikipedia.org], the full blast of the effect of when men in London wore stovepipe hats and moths evolved to prefer stylish black [wikipedia.org], and the beginning of the effect of the recent 120 years.

    P.S. I just read that moth Wiki article; I had no idea that there was a religious controversy about it; I think I read the story about 30 years ago before Wikipedia was "a thing".

    P.P.S. I haven't thought deeply on how to integrate CO2 concentration over time to calculate warming up effect, neither have I looked the procedure up in AR5 report WG1, so I just pulled "rococo period" and "1850s-1890s" out off my ass. I do vagely remember a brother of my granny wearing an actual stovepipe hat at my grandfather's funeral, but that was last century, not 2 centuries ago. And their albedo effect can probably be ignored in the noise.

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