Who would have thought that melting snow cover in the Himalayan Mountains could alter the ocean food chain over a thousand miles away? Well, that's just what's happening, according to a NASA-funded study appearing in this week's Science magazine.
The study finds a decline in winter and spring snow cover over Southwest Asia and the Himalayan mountain range is creating the right conditions for more widespread blooms of ocean plants in the Arabian Sea.
The decrease in snow cover has led to greater differences in both temperature and pressure systems between the Indian subcontinent and the Arabian Sea. The pressure differences generate monsoon winds that mix the ocean water in the Western Arabian Sea. This mixing leads to better growing conditions for tiny, free-floating ocean plants called phytoplankton. Phytoplankton serve as the base of the ocean food chain.
Joaquim Goes, a senior researcher at the Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences in Maine is the study's lead author. He and colleagues used data from OrbImage and NASA's Sea-viewing Wide Field-of-view Sensor (SeaWiFS) satellite to show that phytoplankton concentrations in the Western Arabian Sea have increased by over 350 percent over the past 7 years.
"Climate change and warming are causing a decline in snow cover over the Eurasian region, especially over the Himalayas," said Goes. "The associated shifts in winds, and increased phytoplankton levels in the Arabian Sea, could have far reaching consequences for the ecosystem of the region."
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