used satellite imaging to estimate that two-thirds of 71 large lakes across 33 countries saw algae bloom intensity increase over the past three decades. Researchers caution that there are also far more local causes of algae blooms, including weather patterns, naturally occurring nutrients and agricultural practices, but global warming is not helping.
“The same organism that we study and have studied for decades in the Gulf of Maine and other parts of the U.S. — we thought for a long time that the waters were too cold up there for it to do very well,” Anderson said in an interview.published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Anderson and his team found conditions ripe for large, recurrent harmful algae blooms in the Chukchi Sea.