The glaciers of the Arctic are not really such a lifeless desert as it might seem.. On the contrary, the glaciers of Greenland and Iceland are literally teeming with microbes, according to Science Alert..

Like zombies, most of these microscopic organisms hibernate during the winter but wake up in the summer..

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“In a small pool of melt water on a glacier, 4,000 different species can easily live.. They live on bacteria, algae, viruses and microscopic fungi.. It’s a whole ecosystem that we didn’t know existed until recently,” says microbiologist Alexander Anesio from Aarhus University in Sweden..

Scientists studied ice samples collected in mid-to-late summer in Iceland and Greenland and found that more than half of the bacteria found were active.. The rest were dormant or dead.

But after just a day of thawing, most of these dormant microbes were able to produce the building blocks of amino acids again.. This indicates that microbial communities living in ice and snow can quickly respond to changes when ice melts..

While adapting to climate change is often viewed positively, it is known that drastic changes in one organism can destabilize the entire system.. Rainfall in the Arctic is expected to increase in the future, but already many microbial species thrive in humid environments..

Snow algae, which thrive best in Greenland's meltwater, are a deep dark purple.. In recent years, scientists have noticed that this color is rapidly spreading across the island..

The dark appearance of snow and ice ultimately means more solar heat is absorbed, which increases melting by 20%.. At the same time, the influence of such algae is not taken into account in modern models of climate change.. Their lack of microbes could be another explanation for why glaciers are melting faster than models suggest..

Previous research has shown that adding water to the snowpack for two months resulted in a 48% increase in snow algae.. A new study has shown that just three days of thawing in the laboratory increases the number of active microbes by 35%..

Previously, scientists used a new model that showed that Greenland's glaciers are melting 100 times faster than previously thought.. New modeling takes into account the unique interaction between ice and water in the island's fjords.