Ever wonder where some of the dust, fungal spores, germs, and bacteria go during wind storms? They travel great distances, that’s where. A big part of the volume reaches the atmosphere and gets stored in clouds. In fact, they help in cloud formation. Of course, we can just stretch our imagination a bit and we’ll know that these germs and bacteria also form the cloud droplets, and consequently come down as, say, part of acid rain.
Some scientific experiments have revealed that these air-suspended particles ‘can act as ice nuclei, the skeletons of clouds. Around these nuclei, water and ice in the atmosphere condense and grow, forming clouds and eventually perhaps leading to precipitation.’ Researchers have also found that biological detritus compose roughly 30 percent of these ice-forming particles, while mineral dust makes for 50 percent.
A recent work, funded by the National Science Foundation and the National Center for Atmospheric Research, gave its findings in the May 17 online edition of the journal Nature Geoscience. One of the study’s more important conclusions is that ‘microbes and other biological particles get swept up in dust storms and travel long distances where they help induce the formation of cloud ice.’ This is one such study that can be used as significant reference when revising climate models that try to link the role of clouds in climate.
Via Live Science
