#permafrost — Public Fediverse posts

🌍 TIL: Changing global temperatures are altering the familiar #colors of natural #environments around the planet.

#Arctic #landscapes grow greener as #permafrost thaws and shrubs expand into northern regions. #Lakes darken due to mixing soil from thawing ground, while warming waters trigger #coral bleaching events. Certain #insects and #animals also experience color shifts that affect their survival.

👉 https://www.npr.org/2026/11/08/nx-s1-5393776/color-climate-change-coral-lakes

#science #climate #nature #ecology #biology #earth #research #education #oceans #wildlife #geography #animals #sustainability

#ClimateChange #coral #Arctic #permafrost #birds #bees

"Imagine the bright tones of coral under the sea. What do you see? What colors come to mind?

One of the ways that climate change will alter — or has already altered — our world is by shifting the familiar colors of nature. When warming ocean waters bleach the vibrant colors of coral to white, that’s one example.

'Many young scientists who are working on coral reefs don’t realize that what they’re seeing is vastly degraded,' says Anya Salih, a scientist who has studied coral reefs and their fluorescent colors for decades. 'It’s often hard to perceive how it was to what it is now.'

This change of color isn’t just aesthetic. For coral, bleaching leaves them vulnerable to disease and other stressors that can lead to death. In other situations, these color changes have more complex impacts, ones that scientists are still trying to understand.

(. . .)

Salih remembers when she accompanied a group of scientists to an Australian reef. 'I was also recently on that reef, which was dying, pretty much,' she says. 'And they’d never been on the reef and they thought it was beautiful.'”

https://apps.npr.org/color-climate-change-coral-lakes/