Microbiology and atmospheric processes: the role of biological particles in cloud physics

By O. Möhler, P. DeMott, Gabor Vali, Z. Levin. 2007

415 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Abstract. As part of a series of papers on the sources, distribution and potential impact of biological particles in the atmosphere, this paper introduces and summarizes the potential role of biological particles in atmospheric clouds. Biological particles like bacteria or pollen may be active as both cloud condensation nuclei (CCN) and heterogeneous ice nuclei (IN) and thereby can contribute to the initial cloud formation stages and the development of precipitation through giant CCN and IN processes. The paper gives an introduction to aerosol-cloud processes involving CCN and IN in general and provides a short summary of previous laboratory, field and modelling work which investigated the CCN and IN activity of bacterial cells and pollen. Recent measurements of atmospheric ice nuclei with a continuous flow diffusion chamber (CFDC) and of the heterogeneous ice nucleation efficiency of bacterial cells are also briefly discussed. As a main result of this overview paper we conclude that a proper assessment of the impact of biological particles on tropospheric clouds needs new laboratory, field and modelling work on the abundance of biological particles in the atmosphere and their CCN and heterogeneous IN properties.

Subfields: Atmospheric Science, Global and Planetary Change

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/a6cf4758eda27aeb61040c8bf094c10dc72e3c1c

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Citations in the corpus

Predicting global atmospheric ice nuclei distributions and their impacts on climate (2010, background): “Biological aerosol particles occur at all atmospheric aerosol sizes, but some of the best-known biological organisms possessing ice nucleating surface structures, such as bacteria, are one to a few microns in overall size (29).”
Heterogeneous ice nucleation activity of bacteria: new laboratory experiments at simulated cloud conditions (2008, background): “Because of the importance of the ice phase in clouds in the initiation of precipitation, a role for ice nucleation active bacteria in rain and snowfall has long been suspected (see Möhler et al., 2007, for a review).”
Improvements to an Empirical Parameterization of Heterogeneous Ice Nucleation and Its Comparison with Observations (2013, methodology): “It is reviewed by Morris et al. (2004) and Möhler et al. (2007).”
Characterization of primary biogenic aerosol particles in urban, rural, and high-alpine air by DNA sequence and restriction fragment analysis of ribosomal RNA genes (2007, neutral): “2006; McFiggans et al., 2006; Sun and Ariya, 2006; Möhler et al., 2007; Hock et al., 2007).”
Atmosphere: A Source of Pathogenic or Beneficial Microbes? (2012, background): “Viable bacteria, fungi and yeasts have been observed in fogs, super-cooled cloud droplets, and snow samples [10,11,81].”
Microbiology and atmospheric processes: chemical interactions of primary biological aerosols (2008, positive): “Airborne micro-organisms are incorporated into cloud droplets and raindrops by nucleation scavenging as they have CCN or IN potential (e.g., Lee et al., 2002; Bauer et al., 2003; Möhler et al., 2007) or by washout processes.”
Deactivation of ice nuclei due to atmospherically relevant surface coatings (2009, background): “A few bacteria and some other bioaerosols such as pollen have been shown to be effective IN (Möhler et al 2007, Pratt et al 2009) but their atmospheric abundance and distribution are not known and appears to be extremely low.”
Microbiology and atmospheric processes: research challenges concerning the impact of airborne micro-organisms on the atmosphere and climate (2011, neutral): “This is due in particular to its well-known activity as an ice nucleator at temperatures near zero (Möhler et al., 2007; reviewed by Morris et al., 2004), and to its significant upward flux in the atmosphere (Lindemann et al., 1982), its presence in clouds (Amato et al., 2007b; Sands et al., 1982),…”
Ice nuclei emissions from biomass burning (2009, methodology): “…we did not investigate the temperature dependence of x and limit our discussion to x 30 C, it is likely that IN efficiency decreases with increasing temperature, similar to what has been observed for bacterial [Rogers et al., 1987], mineral [Vali, 1994], and ambient IN [Möhler et al., 2007].”
How important is biological ice nucleation in clouds on a global scale? (2010, result): “For a long time, observational evidence in support of the ‘bioprecipitation hypothesis’ was limited and only indirect (Möhler et al 2007).”
Ice structures, patterns, and processes: A view across the icefields (2012, background): “Aerosol-chamber experiments (AIDA) have been carried to investigate the ice nucleation efficiency of biological particles in clouds (Möhler et al., 2007), and laboratory phase-composition studies of simplified systems demonstrated that organic carbon proxies affect the nucleation kinetics (Murray an”