Abstract
The Arctic is melting at an unprecedented rate and key drivers are changes in snow and ice albedo. Here we show that red snow, a common algal habitat blooming after the onset of melting, plays a crucial role in decreasing albedo. Our data reveal that red pigmented snow algae are cosmopolitan as well as independent of location-specific geochemical and mineralogical factors. The patterns for snow algal diversity, pigmentation and, consequently albedo, are ubiquitous across the Arctic and the reduction in albedo accelerates snow melt and increases the time and area of exposed bare ice. We estimated that the overall decrease in snow albedo by red pigmented snow algal blooms over the course of one melt season can be 13%. This will invariably result in higher melt rates. We argue that such a ‘bio-albedo' effect has to be considered in climate models.
Highlights
The Arctic is melting at an unprecedented rate and key drivers are changes in snow and ice albedo
We have assessed the biogeographical patterns for red snow microbiomes across the Arctic by using high-throughput sequencing of the small subunit ribosomal RNA genes and characterized the species composition of 40 red snow sites in four well-separated and physico-chemically diverse Arctic settings
Samples clustered according to their geographic location (Fig. 2a), and the observed differences were derived from large variations in the relative abundance of Sphingobacteria, Saprospirae, Alphaproteobacteria, Betaproteobacteria and Synechococcophycideae
Summary
The Arctic is melting at an unprecedented rate and key drivers are changes in snow and ice albedo. Tarfala (TAR), Sweden 67.9° N, 18.6° E, ~ 1,150–1,400 m a.s.l. Mittivakat (MIT), Greenland 65.7° N, 37.9° W, ~ 200 m a.s.l. 0.5 km Iceland (ICE) 65.5° N, 20.2° E, ~ 200–900 m a.s.l. The homogeneous algal community composition described above was mirrored in the similar composition of algal cell biomass, fatty acids and pigments with no significant differences between Svalbard and Northern Sweden (Fig. 3 and Supplementary Tables 9–11).
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