At a Glance

As the snowpack melts, human-caused nutrients are carried by the runoff. As temperatures rise, the blooms grow, turning the water orange.Algae is also turning snow pink high atop the Cascade and Olympic mountain ranges. A warming climate is causing blooms to become more frequent.

Algal blooms triggered by climate change have turned waters in Washington's Puget Sound a bright orange and snow high atop the Cascade and Olympic mountains a watermelonpink.

Last week,Laura Hermanson of the Washington State Department of Ecology discovered a ,about 30 miles south of Seattle, while conducting weekly bacteria monitoring, according to the department's blog post.

Other blooms have been recently reported at beaches inPuget Sound,Alki Beach in Seattle, Budd Inlet near Olympia, and at the Central and Whidbey basins, both north of Seattle.

As the snowpack melts in the spring, an excess of human-caused nutrients is carried by the runoff. As temperatures rise, the blooms grow, turning the water orange.

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"An increase in the abundance of Noctiluca is an indication of an unbalanced system, and while the plankton is not toxic itself, their presence creates a cascade of effects in the marine food web," the blog states.

Although blooms have been reported since the 1940s, scientists saythere is a growing concern that the blooms are becoming more frequent over a larger area as a result of human-caused nutrient over-enrichment combined with a warmer climate.

In the mountains, "watermelon snow" has been reported high atop the Cascade and Olympic ranges. The melting snow turns pink each spring from cold-loving algae known as Chlamydomonas nivalis.

Robin Kodner, an assistant professor of biology at Western Washington University, told weather.com Monday thatthealgae is a common occurrence on mountains around the world.

"Most hikers and climbers in the Pacific Northwest and other alpine regions of the U.S., and the worldhave observed the snow turning pink in the spring and summer months," she said, adding that the algae are a group of green algae, that "have a lot of extra pink pigment that protects it from UV and oxidation stress, so they are pink and turn the snow pink."

"Typically, the darker the color, the more algae are growing in the snow," she said.

Kodner did note, however,that scientists worrythe algae may actually make snow melt faster, which could lead to the demise of some glaciers.

A 2016study published in the journal Nature Communications confirmed that the.

Author of the study, Stefanie Lutz ofthe University of Leeds,found that watermelon-shaded arctic ice and snow has a decreased albedo, which allows the snow to absorbmore sunlight. Over the course of one melting season, the studied area had a 13 percent reduction in albedo, and the pink algal blooms were to blame.

"Our results point out that the 'bio-albedo' effect is important and," Lutz said in a statement.

Kodner said it's unlikely the algae is dangerous to humansbut still cautioned against eating the snow.

"There are also lots of fungi and other protozoa and bacteria in the snow that live with the algae that could make people uncomfortable if they eat it," she said. "There is folklore that eating red snow makes you sick, but there is only one study that I know of where a group of scientistsobserved people eating pink snow. They found there was no relationship between snow algae and gastrointestinaldistress."