The Arctic Ocean was once covered year-round by perennial sea ice. However, with global warming, the Arctic is warming nearly four times faster than the rest of the planet and the ocean is now dominated by seasonal ice. The unprecedented transformation the Arctic Ocean is experiencing has implications for the entire marine ecosystem. 

By using new processing methods of satellite data, CRiceS researcher Julienne Stroeve and colleagues have explored how a changing snowpack may have shifted algae bloom onset timings over the last four decades. With thinner ice, more light reaches the upper ocean, and that impacts on the timing of the blooming and the quality of algae with effects further up the food chain. 

According to the study, which was recently published in Geophysical Research Letters, snow depth changes play the dominant role in bloom onset trends in the central Arctic Ocean, the Siberian, Laptev and Barents seas.