Booming blooms: how algae are turning the alps pink - podcast

Science Weekly Series

They are usually associated with toxic, murky lakes. But algae blooms are increasingly turning up in icy regions too. Hannah Devlin speaks to Prof Marian Yallop about the recent appearance of pink snow in the Italian alps, and what the growing numbers of algal blooms could mean for melting glaciers and ice sheets

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  • Read the Guardian’s coverage of pink snow in the Italian alps here and green snow in Antarctica here
  • Marian Yallop is a professor of aquatic microbial ecology at Bristol University
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An aerial picture of pink snow on the Presena glacier near Pellizzano, caused by the presence of colonies of algae of the Ancylonema nordenskioeldii species from Greenland
Photograph: Miguel Medina/AFP/Getty Images
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