Orange River is a 2,432-km long river of southern Africa—but we are not talking about that here.
We are talking about a river that has turned orange in the Alaskan wilderness, which still remains untouched by civilisation.
In an article on ‘Why rivers in Alaska are turning orange’, the Scientific American turns the focus lights on to a disturbing effect of climate change.
Climate change is the result of global warming, or the Earth catching fever, due to mankind spewing greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. Talks about limiting global warming to 1.5oC have been going around for a while now, but that is only the average. The Kobuk Valley National Park has warmed by 2.4oC since 2006—that is like person with a fever of 102.92oF. The increasing warmth is melting polar permafrost and is turning the rivers orange.
Scientists theorise that as the permafrost thaws, a few things begin to happen. The earth below holds incredible amounts of dead plants and animals from a distant era before the ice-age, as well as oxidised iron. Microbes like bacteria de-oxidise (or, reduce) the iron oxide, leaving the pure metal behind, which is soluble in water. This iron is carried by groundwater into oxygenated streams, where the iron rusts again, giving the streams a disagreeable, orange colour.
Well, there might just be some other explanation. But it is still linked to loss of permafrost, which is undeniably due to global warming.