WEBVTT - Short Stuff: Red Snow 0:00:04.160 --> 0:00:06.120 Hey, and welcome to the short Stuff. I'm Josh, and 0:00:06.160 --> 0:00:10.799 there's chuck this short stuff. That's right, What are you 0:00:10.800 --> 0:00:13.640 gonna say? I was saying, yeah, I was wrapping up 0:00:13.680 --> 0:00:18.200 my little song. Oh man, can we start over? Sure? 0:00:18.640 --> 0:00:21.959 All right? Hey, everybody, welcome to short Stuff. I'm chucked. Hey, 0:00:21.960 --> 0:00:25.480 wait a minute, this is going wrong already. All right, 0:00:25.480 --> 0:00:29.960 we're here to talk about red snow and this the 0:00:30.000 --> 0:00:32.479 origin material here was from our old friends at houstuffworks 0:00:32.479 --> 0:00:36.320 dot com and Mark Mancini with his article the Amazing 0:00:36.360 --> 0:00:40.440 and Alarming science behind red Snow. Yes, because snow is 0:00:40.440 --> 0:00:42.800 not supposed to be red. And when the snow turns red, 0:00:42.880 --> 0:00:45.720 you know things have gotten biblical. I thought you were 0:00:45.720 --> 0:00:48.960 about to say, like a rhyming. I could have. I 0:00:49.080 --> 0:00:52.400 chose not to. Specifically, when the snow turns red. That 0:00:52.479 --> 0:00:57.680 means you're not gonna enjoy the future. It's kind of 0:00:57.720 --> 0:01:00.120 what that means. I thought it was great. Mark A. 0:01:00.160 --> 0:01:03.440 Mancini went to the trouble of saying like, Okay, snow's 0:01:03.520 --> 0:01:07.200 normally white, and here's why. And I feel like we 0:01:07.200 --> 0:01:10.039 should honor his work by mentioning it to you. Let's 0:01:10.040 --> 0:01:12.640 hear it. Why is it white? Oh? Because the crystals 0:01:12.760 --> 0:01:18.280 that make up ice or snow scatter all colors on 0:01:18.360 --> 0:01:22.399 the visible wavelength, so everything's reflected back as just white. 0:01:22.400 --> 0:01:26.119 Because they all mixed together, no color gets absorbed, and 0:01:27.160 --> 0:01:30.160 so the snow doesn't seem like blue or red normally. 0:01:30.720 --> 0:01:34.119 It can turn red, and it's actually we've known it 0:01:34.120 --> 0:01:36.040 turns red once in a while for a very long time. 0:01:36.240 --> 0:01:39.240 This is news to me, but apparently as far back 0:01:39.280 --> 0:01:42.880 as Pliny the Elder again, yeah, I love that guy. 0:01:43.200 --> 0:01:47.160 He was writing from twenty three to seventy nine CE, 0:01:47.800 --> 0:01:51.160 and he wrote about red tennant snow as well. Yeah, 0:01:51.200 --> 0:01:54.200 I mean Pliny the Elder wrote about red snow. I 0:01:54.240 --> 0:01:57.320 think in the in the Middle Ages there were people 0:01:57.880 --> 0:02:02.440 talking about red snow. There's a guy named Randall Servenni, 0:02:02.600 --> 0:02:05.160 who it looks like Mark might have actually interviewed for 0:02:05.200 --> 0:02:09.600 this article. In this Randall wrote a book as a 0:02:09.600 --> 0:02:12.640 professor at Arizona State University called Freaks of the Storm, 0:02:13.400 --> 0:02:16.920 which is about kind of wacky weather, and there was 0:02:16.960 --> 0:02:20.480 a chapter on red snow and he said, you know, 0:02:20.560 --> 0:02:24.800 Charles Darwin saw red snow and the Andes Mountains. It 0:02:24.840 --> 0:02:26.840 was white and when it turned red as it thawed 0:02:27.280 --> 0:02:29.960 and so a lot of like very famous people in 0:02:30.040 --> 0:02:34.000 history have been kind of freaked out by seeing this phenomenon. 0:02:34.760 --> 0:02:37.239 I don't know at what point we figured this out, 0:02:37.240 --> 0:02:40.400 but apparently by the time Darwin was around in the 0:02:40.440 --> 0:02:44.040 mid nineteenth century and seeing red snow in the Andes, 0:02:45.120 --> 0:02:47.880 he knew what it was. So it like at least 0:02:47.919 --> 0:02:51.000 by the mid nineteenth century, we knew that red snow, 0:02:51.000 --> 0:02:55.160 it turns out, is actually caused by green algae of 0:02:55.200 --> 0:02:58.520 all things. Yeah, and that's you know, we'll get in 0:02:58.560 --> 0:03:01.560 after the jump to exactly what's going on there. It 0:03:01.639 --> 0:03:05.760 can also you can get like reddish pinkish hues if 0:03:05.800 --> 0:03:11.359 like Saharan dust blows like into Europe or something like that. 0:03:11.360 --> 0:03:13.520 That's not the kind of red snow we're talking about. 0:03:13.960 --> 0:03:16.480 We're talking about and if you see pictures of like 0:03:16.760 --> 0:03:20.200 legit red snow and as it melts, red water flows 0:03:20.200 --> 0:03:23.640 and waterfalls all over the world, And like you said, 0:03:23.680 --> 0:03:31.760 it's green algae specifically, clama dominus nivalis very nice. I 0:03:31.880 --> 0:03:34.639 practiced it too. I think you nailed it. Let's hear 0:03:34.680 --> 0:03:41.440 your version, clamidinous nivalis. It sounds like we both just 0:03:41.640 --> 0:03:44.240 cast a magic spell. Either way, though, I'd love Latin 0:03:44.320 --> 0:03:46.960 for that reason. All right, well, let's take an early 0:03:47.000 --> 0:03:50.240 break since that's a pseudo cliffhanger. Maybe that's what we 0:03:50.320 --> 0:03:52.800 just conjured was a break, and we'll tell you all 0:03:52.840 --> 0:03:56.440 about how green algae can turn white snow red right 0:03:56.480 --> 0:04:32.600 after this. Okay, So Clomidamnus clemidamnus, Yeah, novalis is a 0:04:32.680 --> 0:04:34.400 type of green algae, like we said, but we've been 0:04:34.440 --> 0:04:38.760 talking about red snow and the reason. Um well, let 0:04:38.800 --> 0:04:40.880 me tell you a little bit more about this green algae. First, 0:04:41.000 --> 0:04:43.480 let's hear you get into why it's I've seen it 0:04:43.600 --> 0:04:49.400 written about as a cryophilic microu carryote, meaning it loves 0:04:49.640 --> 0:04:54.200 the cold, and it's a very tiny u carryote. It's 0:04:54.240 --> 0:04:59.480 like La Nina means the Nina, right, it's from Kingdom Plante. 0:04:59.600 --> 0:05:02.880 It's a plant, but it's also mobile. It's very very 0:05:03.000 --> 0:05:07.440 bizarre in no small part because again it's green, but 0:05:08.040 --> 0:05:10.760 and it's a plant, but it lives in high altitude 0:05:10.800 --> 0:05:14.640 snowfields like the Arctic or in the Andes Mountains. And 0:05:15.600 --> 0:05:18.360 it's green, but it produces a red pigment called asta 0:05:18.480 --> 0:05:22.800 zanthon during warm seasons. And here's the crux of everything. 0:05:23.120 --> 0:05:27.599 If green algae didn't produce asta zanthon, we probably would 0:05:27.640 --> 0:05:30.640 not be talking about it right now. Yeah, that's a 0:05:30.640 --> 0:05:33.920 good point. The stuff is pretty interesting. There's a biologist 0:05:34.000 --> 0:05:38.000 named Arwin Edwards who I think was also interviewed for 0:05:38.040 --> 0:05:41.200 this article, who says that this red pigment xts kind 0:05:41.200 --> 0:05:45.080 of like a sunscreen. Yea. It helps protect the organisms 0:05:45.200 --> 0:05:49.520 from excessive solar radiation during the warm seasons. And so 0:05:50.560 --> 0:05:53.880 what happens is during the wintertime, these organisms go dormant 0:05:55.000 --> 0:05:58.599 spring springs, and then they come to the surface and bloom. 0:05:59.160 --> 0:06:03.120 But you know, it can't just bloom as in snow 0:06:03.240 --> 0:06:08.279 like algae needs like liquid water to bloom. So as 0:06:08.400 --> 0:06:10.840 the snow melts, it becomes more of that sort of 0:06:10.880 --> 0:06:14.159 wet snow, and that's when the algae release starts blooming. 0:06:14.200 --> 0:06:16.960 In the wet snow, those algile cells get going and 0:06:17.200 --> 0:06:22.680 they photosynthesize, and this is where that red pigment comes about. Yeah, 0:06:22.920 --> 0:06:25.240 and so if you get a bunch of these things together, 0:06:25.360 --> 0:06:28.239 and a lot of them can get together a single 0:06:28.320 --> 0:06:32.680 millimeter of snow, I guess a cubic melimeter can contain 0:06:33.240 --> 0:06:37.640 half a million of these individuals. There's a lot of them, 0:06:37.720 --> 0:06:39.120 and when you put a lot of them together, the 0:06:39.200 --> 0:06:42.720 snow turns red and not just like, oh, it looks 0:06:42.800 --> 0:06:46.320 kind of reddish. Especially when it melts, it is like 0:06:46.640 --> 0:06:50.640 a puddle of blood. It looks like basically semi translucent blood. 0:06:50.720 --> 0:06:54.320 It's that red. It's pretty cool looking in other words. Yeah, 0:06:54.360 --> 0:06:57.800 And there's a problem though with it turning red, because, 0:06:58.080 --> 0:06:59.920 like you said, it needs a little bit of melted 0:07:00.120 --> 0:07:03.520 snow to start to bloom, to make it to the 0:07:03.560 --> 0:07:06.160 surface and start to thrive. But after it gets that 0:07:06.279 --> 0:07:10.440 initial foothold, it kind of takes over itself because that 0:07:10.680 --> 0:07:16.000 red pigment absorbs way more solar radiation than white snow. 0:07:16.280 --> 0:07:19.600 White snow reflects everything, right, so white snow can stay 0:07:19.640 --> 0:07:22.120 colder longer. If you've ever seen a snow pile that 0:07:22.280 --> 0:07:24.640 got put in the corner of a parking lot in 0:07:24.680 --> 0:07:28.040 the Midwest or north and is still there in like May, 0:07:29.080 --> 0:07:32.440 that's because that that snow is reflecting back although that 0:07:32.520 --> 0:07:35.160 solar radiation or a lot of it. If that was red, 0:07:35.280 --> 0:07:39.240 it'd be melted by February, that's the saying. And this 0:07:39.400 --> 0:07:42.360 stuff is red, so the more it blooms, the more 0:07:42.440 --> 0:07:44.920 it absorbs heat, the more it warms the surrounding snow, 0:07:45.160 --> 0:07:49.040 the more the snow melts. Yeah, I mean that that 0:07:49.240 --> 0:07:51.440 white car that you have is going to be less 0:07:51.600 --> 0:07:55.200 hot than your red car and certainly your black car. 0:07:56.040 --> 0:07:58.480 That's why you see so many white cars in hot 0:07:59.520 --> 0:08:02.120 places where hot climate, like out in the desert. And 0:08:02.240 --> 0:08:05.640 it's the same deal here. So as the stuff turns round, 0:08:05.720 --> 0:08:08.600 like you said, it sort of becomes a cycle, a 0:08:08.680 --> 0:08:12.920 feedback loop where it starts melting more and more stuff, 0:08:13.520 --> 0:08:16.680 and then that in turn, you know, can spread the 0:08:16.760 --> 0:08:19.520 algae and all of a sudden you might have a 0:08:19.720 --> 0:08:24.120 legit problem on your hands. And Nature magazine thinks that's 0:08:24.160 --> 0:08:27.240 the case. In twenty sixteen, they published a report under 0:08:27.280 --> 0:08:31.360 the leadership of Stephanie Let's believe from the University of Leeds, 0:08:31.440 --> 0:08:34.719 and they're basically saying, hey, there's about a five to 0:08:34.880 --> 0:08:39.520 fifteen percent acceleration of glacier melting rates because of this 0:08:39.640 --> 0:08:43.640 algae on the surface, because it's darker. Yeah, and we 0:08:43.720 --> 0:08:46.200 should say this is not so new freak of nature, 0:08:46.400 --> 0:08:49.040 like this has always been going on. The reason that 0:08:49.120 --> 0:08:52.720 it's alarming, according to that twenty sixteen paper from Nature 0:08:53.280 --> 0:08:57.199 is that, like you just said, they're accelerating snow melt, 0:08:57.840 --> 0:09:02.120 and because global temperatures are warming and Arctic snowmelt is 0:09:02.280 --> 0:09:06.280 really important to climate change in general, they're saying, like, 0:09:06.440 --> 0:09:08.960 we need to take this into effect when we start 0:09:09.040 --> 0:09:12.440 making our climate models for glacial melting. And no one 0:09:12.520 --> 0:09:15.559 has until or no one did until twenty sixteen. But 0:09:15.679 --> 0:09:21.280 their paper was so essentially irrefutable. They did exactly what 0:09:21.360 --> 0:09:24.199 they set out to do. Now people start to include 0:09:24.240 --> 0:09:30.199 red snow blooms into climate models. Yeah, I mean it's 0:09:30.280 --> 0:09:34.880 kind of that simple. It's speeding things up, and they're 0:09:34.960 --> 0:09:38.160 including it in those models because it's that that feedback 0:09:38.200 --> 0:09:40.760 loop is happening, and you can't just you have to 0:09:40.840 --> 0:09:43.600 include all the variables. And this is officially counts as 0:09:43.640 --> 0:09:46.559 a variable. Yes, So yeah, you couldn't make a prediction 0:09:46.600 --> 0:09:48.800 of like what kind of glacial melt you're going to 0:09:48.880 --> 0:09:52.120 see as the temperature warms without taking that into account. 0:09:52.200 --> 0:09:55.319 It might they might melt way faster, fifteen percent faster 0:09:55.760 --> 0:09:58.440 than you would account for, and your sea wall wouldn't 0:09:58.440 --> 0:10:00.760 be built in time. So ts for you. You should 0:10:00.760 --> 0:10:04.040 have taken red snow into account. That's right. One find 0:10:04.080 --> 0:10:07.599 a little button on this thanks to mister Mancini. We 0:10:08.600 --> 0:10:13.720 now have learned that apparently this algae smells like watermelon. 0:10:15.600 --> 0:10:18.520 I think who they interviewed said that they didn't smell 0:10:18.559 --> 0:10:22.040 it themselves, but there are people that have reported this 0:10:22.600 --> 0:10:27.319 red pigment off gas is a water melanie like smell. Yes, 0:10:27.559 --> 0:10:32.000 but Mark Mancini warns, don't eat it. Yeah, apparently the 0:10:32.160 --> 0:10:34.400 people have eaten it and have blamed red snow for 0:10:34.520 --> 0:10:38.200 gastric problems, and that's just not correct. It's probably something 0:10:38.280 --> 0:10:40.840 else in the snow. But don't eat it anyway. Yeah, 0:10:40.840 --> 0:10:44.640 don't eat the yellow snow. That's what Frank Zappa said. Ye, 0:10:45.280 --> 0:10:48.400 and don't eat the red snow because we told you 0:10:48.520 --> 0:10:51.400 by way of our friends at holstuffworks dot com. That's 0:10:51.440 --> 0:10:56.320 the Chuck Bryant corollary. That's right. Uh, well, Chuck said, 0:10:56.320 --> 0:11:02.040 that's right. Everybody that means short stuff is out. Stuff 0:11:02.080 --> 0:11:04.880 you should know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more 0:11:04.920 --> 0:11:08.840 podcasts My Heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, 0:11:09.000 --> 0:11:10.840 or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.