Algae blooms that cause pink snow could accelerate melting as Earth warms

“There never used to be any funding for this kind of work,” says Robin Kodner, a biologist at Western Washington University who’s at the forefront of a new push to understand what folks in the Pacific Northwest call “watermelon snow” — if they’ve heard of it at all. A nickname for it in the French Alps is sang de glacier, or glacier blood. While red and pink are the most common colors, different types of snow algae produce a rainbow of hues, including orange, yellow and green.

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Story features the research of WWU's Robin Kodner and Alia Khan of the College of the Environment