The summer of 2015 will probably be remembered as one offire , drouth , andhot , red-hot weather . But it ’s also been a summer of frightfully ravenous , microscopic life form . From Lake Erie to the North Atlantic , diminutive green algae are procreate like demented . And there ’s no better way to appreciate the sheer immensity of these bloom of youth than to take a look at the Baltic Sea , where swirling ocean currents are do viridescent sea storm .
The image above , competently dub “ Eye of an Algal Storm , ” was captured by the European Space Agency ’s Sentinel-2A orbiter over the middle of the Baltic Sea on August 7th . With a spatial resolution of just 10 meters , shimmer immature ripples and waves are captured in stunning detail . In the top center of the image , you could even make out the Wake Island of a ship as it slices through cyanobacteria - laden waters .
Here ’s another , slightly more soar - out aspect of the algal bloom from the same Clarence Shepard Day Jr. :
alga blooms make striking mental picture , but they also have a filthy tendency to make toxic pollution and eat up all the atomic number 8 in the water system , suffocate out other marine biography shape . That ’s why we now have a 7,000 solid miledead zonein the Gulf of Mexico . There are a bunch of things that can cause algal blooms to spread like wildfire , including warm waters , unagitated seas , and fertiliser befoulment . ( The first two are implicate in this summer ’s Baltic bloom ) .
Meanwhile on this side of the Atlantic , alga fed by phosphorus - productive agrarian overflow are causing the Great Lakes to lookunusually emerald . scientist studying Lake Eriesayit ’s almost certain to be the worst heyday on record .
And if that was n’t enough , awarm Pacific Ocean blobis feeding another monumental alga efflorescence , one that runs the entire distance of the west coast from Alaska to California . This bloom , composed mainly of role player - nitzschia algae , is particularly disturbing because it ’s producing domoic acid , a strong neurolysin that can make its way into mammals via mollusk . Fisheries in pretend surface area have been closed for the summertime .
Sentinel-2A , which was found into orbit on June 23rd as part of Europe ’s newCopernicusenvironmental monitoring program , has only been active for a few calendar week . Between Copernicus and NASA ’s ever - growing fleet of Earth - observing satellite , our ability to canvas ecosystem from distance has been increase tremendously . Let ’s just hope that our electrical capacity to unsex environmental problems begins to turn in tone .
[ ESA News|NASA ]
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