How important is biological ice nucleation in clouds on a global scale?

By C. Hoose, J. Kristjánsson, Susannah Burrows, James Y Chen, A. Hazra. 2010

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The high ice nucleating ability of some biological particles has led to speculations about living and dead organisms being involved in cloud ice and precipitation formation, exerting a possibly significant influence on weather and climate. In the present study, the role of primary biological aerosol particles (PBAPs) as heterogeneous ice nuclei is investigated with a global model. Emission parametrizations for bacteria, fungal spores and pollen based on recent literature are introduced, as well as an immersion freezing parametrization based on classical nucleation theory and laboratory measurements. The simulated contribution of PBAPs to the global average ice nucleation rate is only 10 − 5%, with an uppermost estimate of 0.6%. At the same time, observed PBAP concentrations in air and biological ice nucleus concentrations in snow are reasonably well captured by the model. This implies that ‘bioprecipitation’ processes (snow and rain initiated by PBAPs) are of minor importance on the global scale.

Subfields: Atmospheric Science, Global and Planetary Change, Health, Toxicology and Mutagenesis

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/1686966cd352ecbcaddd3954df24073fa5e96739

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Citations in the corpus

Global observations of aerosol‐cloud‐precipitation‐climate interactions (2014, background): “Furthermore, particular kinds of bacteria can serve as IN at relatively warm temperatures of only a few degrees below 0°C [Hoose et al., 2010], but there is presently no ability to detect them by remote sensing.”
Immersion freezing of ice nucleation active protein complexes (2012, result): “Such an enhancement of the ice nucleation ability of mineral and soil dusts by bacterial IN could increase the importance of bacterial IN compared to the results presented in Hoose et al. (2010).”
Biological residues define the ice nucleation properties of soil dust (2011, methodology): “We tested ice nucleation efficiency by immersion freezing, which has been estimated theoretically to represent the vast majority of nucleation events (Hoose et al., 2010b). By indirect observational means, Westbrook and Illingworth (2011) come to a similar conclusion.”
Suspendable macromolecules are responsible for ice nucleation activity of birch and conifer pollen (2012, background): “According to recent model calculations (Hoose et al., 2010) average pollen concentrations are below 100 m−3 above the continental surface and nearly zero above the oceanic surface.”
A Classical-Theory-Based Parameterization of Heterogeneous Ice Nucleation by Mineral Dust, Soot, and Biological Particles in a Global Climate Model (2010, background): “The biological particle concentrations are in fair agreement with measurements (Hoose et al. 2010).”
Ice nucleation by water-soluble macromolecules (2014, background): “Several former studies have focused on quantifying biological INs either by analyzing precipitation samples (Christner et al., 2008a, b), or by atmospheric modeling based on emission and deposition data (Hoose et al., 2010).”
The ice nucleation ability of one of the most abundant types of fungal spores found in the atmosphere (2010, unknown): “5 Recent modelling studies have begun to explore the effect of biological ice nucleation on cloud microphysics, dynamics and precipitation (Hoose et al., 2010; Phillips et al., 2009; Diehl et al., 2006).”