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Short Stuff: Red Snow · Stuff You Should Know

• 0:04
  Speaker 1: Hey, and welcome to the short Stuff. I'm Josh, and
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: there's chuck this short stuff. That's right, What are you
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: gonna say? I was saying, yeah, I was wrapping up
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: my little song. Oh man, can we start over? Sure?
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: All right? Hey, everybody, welcome to short Stuff. I'm chucked. Hey,
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: wait a minute, this is going wrong already. All right,
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: we're here to talk about red snow and this the
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: origin material here was from our old friends at houstuffworks
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: dot com and Mark Mancini with his article the Amazing
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: and Alarming science behind red Snow. Yes, because snow is
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: not supposed to be red. And when the snow turns red,
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: you know things have gotten biblical. I thought you were
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: about to say, like a rhyming. I could have. I
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: chose not to. Specifically, when the snow turns red. That
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: means you're not gonna enjoy the future. It's kind of
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: what that means. I thought it was great. Mark A.
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: Mancini went to the trouble of saying like, Okay, snow's
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: normally white, and here's why. And I feel like we
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: should honor his work by mentioning it to you. Let's
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  Speaker 1: hear it. Why is it white? Oh? Because the crystals
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: that make up ice or snow scatter all colors on
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: the visible wavelength, so everything's reflected back as just white.
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  Speaker 1: Because they all mixed together, no color gets absorbed, and
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: so the snow doesn't seem like blue or red normally.
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: It can turn red, and it's actually we've known it
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: turns red once in a while for a very long time.
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  Speaker 1: This is news to me, but apparently as far back
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: as Pliny the Elder again, yeah, I love that guy.
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  Speaker 1: He was writing from twenty three to seventy nine CE,
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: and he wrote about red tennant snow as well. Yeah,
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  Speaker 1: I mean Pliny the Elder wrote about red snow. I
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: think in the in the Middle Ages there were people
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: talking about red snow. There's a guy named Randall Servenni,
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: who it looks like Mark might have actually interviewed for
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: this article. In this Randall wrote a book as a
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: professor at Arizona State University called Freaks of the Storm,
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: which is about kind of wacky weather, and there was
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: a chapter on red snow and he said, you know,
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: Charles Darwin saw red snow and the Andes Mountains. It
• 2:24
  Speaker 1: was white and when it turned red as it thawed
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: and so a lot of like very famous people in
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: history have been kind of freaked out by seeing this phenomenon.
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: I don't know at what point we figured this out,
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: but apparently by the time Darwin was around in the
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: mid nineteenth century and seeing red snow in the Andes,
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: he knew what it was. So it like at least
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: by the mid nineteenth century, we knew that red snow,
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: it turns out, is actually caused by green algae of
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: all things. Yeah, and that's you know, we'll get in
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: after the jump to exactly what's going on there. It
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: can also you can get like reddish pinkish hues if
• 3:05
  Speaker 1: like Saharan dust blows like into Europe or something like that.
• 3:11
  Speaker 1: That's not the kind of red snow we're talking about.
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: We're talking about and if you see pictures of like
• 3:16
  Speaker 1: legit red snow and as it melts, red water flows
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  Speaker 1: and waterfalls all over the world, And like you said,
• 3:23
  Speaker 1: it's green algae specifically, clama dominus nivalis very nice. I
• 3:31
  Speaker 1: practiced it too. I think you nailed it. Let's hear
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: your version, clamidinous nivalis. It sounds like we both just
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: cast a magic spell. Either way, though, I'd love Latin
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: for that reason. All right, well, let's take an early
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: break since that's a pseudo cliffhanger. Maybe that's what we
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: just conjured was a break, and we'll tell you all
• 3:52
  Speaker 1: about how green algae can turn white snow red right
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: after this. Okay, So Clomidamnus clemidamnus, Yeah, novalis is a
• 4:32
  Speaker 1: type of green algae, like we said, but we've been
• 4:34
  Speaker 1: talking about red snow and the reason. Um well, let
• 4:38
  Speaker 1: me tell you a little bit more about this green algae. First,
• 4:41
  Speaker 1: let's hear you get into why it's I've seen it
• 4:43
  Speaker 1: written about as a cryophilic microu carryote, meaning it loves
• 4:49
  Speaker 1: the cold, and it's a very tiny u carryote. It's
• 4:54
  Speaker 1: like La Nina means the Nina, right, it's from Kingdom Plante.
• 4:59
  Speaker 1: It's a plant, but it's also mobile. It's very very
• 5:03
  Speaker 1: bizarre in no small part because again it's green, but
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  Speaker 1: and it's a plant, but it lives in high altitude
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  Speaker 1: snowfields like the Arctic or in the Andes Mountains. And
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  Speaker 1: it's green, but it produces a red pigment called asta
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  Speaker 1: zanthon during warm seasons. And here's the crux of everything.
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  Speaker 1: If green algae didn't produce asta zanthon, we probably would
• 5:27
  Speaker 1: not be talking about it right now. Yeah, that's a
• 5:30
  Speaker 1: good point. The stuff is pretty interesting. There's a biologist
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  Speaker 1: named Arwin Edwards who I think was also interviewed for
• 5:38
  Speaker 1: this article, who says that this red pigment xts kind
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  Speaker 1: of like a sunscreen. Yea. It helps protect the organisms
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  Speaker 1: from excessive solar radiation during the warm seasons. And so
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  Speaker 1: what happens is during the wintertime, these organisms go dormant
• 5:55
  Speaker 1: spring springs, and then they come to the surface and bloom.
• 5:59
  Speaker 1: But you know, it can't just bloom as in snow
• 6:03
  Speaker 1: like algae needs like liquid water to bloom. So as
• 6:08
  Speaker 1: the snow melts, it becomes more of that sort of
• 6:10
  Speaker 1: wet snow, and that's when the algae release starts blooming.
• 6:14
  Speaker 1: In the wet snow, those algile cells get going and
• 6:17
  Speaker 1: they photosynthesize, and this is where that red pigment comes about. Yeah,
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  Speaker 1: and so if you get a bunch of these things together,
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  Speaker 1: and a lot of them can get together a single
• 6:28
  Speaker 1: millimeter of snow, I guess a cubic melimeter can contain
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  Speaker 1: half a million of these individuals. There's a lot of them,
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  Speaker 1: and when you put a lot of them together, the
• 6:39
  Speaker 1: snow turns red and not just like, oh, it looks
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  Speaker 1: kind of reddish. Especially when it melts, it is like
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  Speaker 1: a puddle of blood. It looks like basically semi translucent blood.
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  Speaker 1: It's that red. It's pretty cool looking in other words. Yeah,
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  Speaker 1: And there's a problem though with it turning red, because,
• 6:58
  Speaker 1: like you said, it needs a little bit of melted
• 7:00
  Speaker 1: snow to start to bloom, to make it to the
• 7:03
  Speaker 1: surface and start to thrive. But after it gets that
• 7:06
  Speaker 1: initial foothold, it kind of takes over itself because that
• 7:10
  Speaker 1: red pigment absorbs way more solar radiation than white snow.
• 7:16
  Speaker 1: White snow reflects everything, right, so white snow can stay
• 7:19
  Speaker 1: colder longer. If you've ever seen a snow pile that
• 7:22
  Speaker 1: got put in the corner of a parking lot in
• 7:24
  Speaker 1: the Midwest or north and is still there in like May,
• 7:29
  Speaker 1: that's because that that snow is reflecting back although that
• 7:32
  Speaker 1: solar radiation or a lot of it. If that was red,
• 7:35
  Speaker 1: it'd be melted by February, that's the saying. And this
• 7:39
  Speaker 1: stuff is red, so the more it blooms, the more
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  Speaker 1: it absorbs heat, the more it warms the surrounding snow,
• 7:45
  Speaker 1: the more the snow melts. Yeah, I mean that that
• 7:49
  Speaker 1: white car that you have is going to be less
• 7:51
  Speaker 1: hot than your red car and certainly your black car.
• 7:56
  Speaker 1: That's why you see so many white cars in hot
• 7:59
  Speaker 1: places where hot climate, like out in the desert. And
• 8:02
  Speaker 1: it's the same deal here. So as the stuff turns round,
• 8:05
  Speaker 1: like you said, it sort of becomes a cycle, a
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  Speaker 1: feedback loop where it starts melting more and more stuff,
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  Speaker 1: and then that in turn, you know, can spread the
• 8:16
  Speaker 1: algae and all of a sudden you might have a
• 8:19
  Speaker 1: legit problem on your hands. And Nature magazine thinks that's
• 8:24
  Speaker 1: the case. In twenty sixteen, they published a report under
• 8:27
  Speaker 1: the leadership of Stephanie Let's believe from the University of Leeds,
• 8:31
  Speaker 1: and they're basically saying, hey, there's about a five to
• 8:34
  Speaker 1: fifteen percent acceleration of glacier melting rates because of this
• 8:39
  Speaker 1: algae on the surface, because it's darker. Yeah, and we
• 8:43
  Speaker 1: should say this is not so new freak of nature,
• 8:46
  Speaker 1: like this has always been going on. The reason that
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  Speaker 1: it's alarming, according to that twenty sixteen paper from Nature
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  Speaker 1: is that, like you just said, they're accelerating snow melt,
• 8:57
  Speaker 1: and because global temperatures are warming and Arctic snowmelt is
• 9:02
  Speaker 1: really important to climate change in general, they're saying, like,
• 9:06
  Speaker 1: we need to take this into effect when we start
• 9:09
  Speaker 1: making our climate models for glacial melting. And no one
• 9:12
  Speaker 1: has until or no one did until twenty sixteen. But
• 9:15
  Speaker 1: their paper was so essentially irrefutable. They did exactly what
• 9:21
  Speaker 1: they set out to do. Now people start to include
• 9:24
  Speaker 1: red snow blooms into climate models. Yeah, I mean it's
• 9:30
  Speaker 1: kind of that simple. It's speeding things up, and they're
• 9:34
  Speaker 1: including it in those models because it's that that feedback
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  Speaker 1: loop is happening, and you can't just you have to
• 9:40
  Speaker 1: include all the variables. And this is officially counts as
• 9:43
  Speaker 1: a variable. Yes, So yeah, you couldn't make a prediction
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  Speaker 1: of like what kind of glacial melt you're going to
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  Speaker 1: see as the temperature warms without taking that into account.
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  Speaker 1: It might they might melt way faster, fifteen percent faster
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  Speaker 1: than you would account for, and your sea wall wouldn't
• 9:58
  Speaker 1: be built in time. So ts for you. You should
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: have taken red snow into account. That's right. One find
• 10:04
  Speaker 1: a little button on this thanks to mister Mancini. We
• 10:08
  Speaker 1: now have learned that apparently this algae smells like watermelon.
• 10:15
  Speaker 1: I think who they interviewed said that they didn't smell
• 10:18
  Speaker 1: it themselves, but there are people that have reported this
• 10:22
  Speaker 1: red pigment off gas is a water melanie like smell. Yes,
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  Speaker 1: but Mark Mancini warns, don't eat it. Yeah, apparently the
• 10:32
  Speaker 1: people have eaten it and have blamed red snow for
• 10:34
  Speaker 1: gastric problems, and that's just not correct. It's probably something
• 10:38
  Speaker 1: else in the snow. But don't eat it anyway. Yeah,
• 10:40
  Speaker 1: don't eat the yellow snow. That's what Frank Zappa said. Ye,
• 10:45
  Speaker 1: and don't eat the red snow because we told you
• 10:48
  Speaker 1: by way of our friends at holstuffworks dot com. That's
• 10:51
  Speaker 1: the Chuck Bryant corollary. That's right. Uh, well, Chuck said,
• 10:56
  Speaker 1: that's right. Everybody that means short stuff is out. Stuff
• 11:02
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