Sandy spores help seed clouds

Kate Ravilious in Environmental Research Web: For most of us sandy beaches are associated with sandcastles and sunbathing, but now it turns out that these golden stretches of coastline could also play an important role in the kind of weather that we receive. New research shows that bacterial and fungal spores in windblown sand may be influencing the amount and type of clouds in the sky.

Brian Palenik from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, US, and colleagues collected air samples from the end of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography pier – located around 300 m from the shore. An analysis of the aerosols in the samples showed that two types of fungi – Basidiomycota and Ascomycota – and two types of bacteria – Firmicutes and Proteobacteria – were common constituents of the mix.

….Palenik and colleagues' data suggest that sandy beaches could be a significant source of biological aerosols with the potential to affect cloud formation. Since sandy beaches are found all over the world they may be an important provider of biological aerosols and hence play a previously unappreciated role in our weather. And as our climate changes the role that some of these biological aerosols play could alter too. …

Crepuscular rays through clouds, shot by PiccoloNamek, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 3.0