PhysOrg: The first ecological study of an entire glacier has found that microbes drastically reduce surface reflectivity and have a non-negligible impact on the amount of sunlight that is reflected into space.
The research, led by the University of Leeds and published today in the journal FEMS Microbiology Ecology, will help improve climate change models that have previously neglected the role of microbes in darkening the Earth's surface.
Observing how life thrives at extreme cold temperatures also...