Global warming enhances the growth of algae. Especially the poisonous blue-algae, because they seem to react stronger on the increase of warmth than other species.  This will lead to problems over time. Especially during warm dry summers, the water quality will decrease.

This is what algae specialists Jef Huisman (University of Amsterdam) and Hans Paerl (University of North Carolina) expect. They write this in the scientific magazine “Science”. 

Blue algae can be found worldwide and seem to cause more and more problem in lakes in Africa, Australia, China, America and also a lot of European waters. Huisman and Paerl base their conclusions on different studies that claim that the increasing annoyance is to blame to global warming.

Blue algae are poisonous to man and animal and thrive at high temperatures. Especially in food-rich water with high concentration of nitrogen and phosphates. They quote: “Blooms like it hot”.
 

During warm weather, the top layer of the water gets warmed more intense than the rest of the water. This warmer water expands and keeps floating on the colder water beneath it. Because of this, layers are formed, (stratification) and the water gets less mixed.
 

These conditions are perfect for the algae, because this allows them to create little gas bubbles in their cells. Therefore the cells get more buoyancy. During calm and warm weather, these algae massively start to float towards the surface of the water and create thick layers.
 

These layers catch all the light and block it from the other algae (like green algae and pebble-weeds), that don’t have the ability to float. This way, the blue algae dominate the other algae during warm summer weather.

Besides these problems, the algae seem to be very fit to produce food or health products from it.

More information about the toxiness of Blue algae (click here)


Video about problems with blue-green algae