Researcher Sirpa Lehtinen from the Finnish Environment Institute (Syke) said that cyanobacteria exist in seawater all year round, but intense heat causes them to multiply quickly.
Hundreds of ice balls could be seen floating on the beach at Ohtakari island in Finland’s Bay of Bothnia.
The Finnish researcher says the source of southern Finland's unusually slippery roads and messy snow this winter is very likely due to warm air from the sea.
With current tropical conditions set to continue for another week, the situation is not likely to improve before the end of July or early August.
The oval ice formations created by wave action were piled up on a Hailuoto beach.
Sipilä said that during his 40 years working for state-owned parks and wildlife management agency Metsähallitus, he has never seen such poor ice conditions in January.
The Finnish Environment Institute (SYKE) has warned that the Gulf of Finland faces the risk of earlier and larger than usual blue-green algae blooms this summer – weather permitting. The environment agency says high levels of phosphorous have the potential to feed abundant toxic algal growths.
Meteorologist Niko Tollman of the Finnish Meteorology Institute confirms that counting up the number of stormy days this past month made January one of the windiest first months of the year over sea areas since 1994.
Ice cover over Finland's sea areas is very low. Experts warn that the ice is now very thin over the sea, and with spring slowly arriving, the situation is not likely to improve.
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