New Evidence: Germs Cause Rain
No doubt we’ve got some crazy weather going on these days. Some people say it’s because of global warming while others claim it’s just the natural cycle of weather fluctuations the earth has always experienced. Some blame it on those mischievous kids, El Niño and La Nina while still others cite the hole in the ozone layer, our vanishing rain forests, factory pollution, agribusiness, and car exhausts. Everybody has a theory. One scientist now says it’s germs that cause rain.
Not all the rain but certainly some of it, according to Brent Christner, a professor of biological sciences at Louisiana State University, and his colleagues. They’ve traveled the world testing their theory and the results of their studies can be found in today’s issue of the journal Science.
Scientists have long known that a particle of some sort, often dust or soot, is needed to form an ice crystal in the atmosphere. Moisture in the atmosphere clings to the tiny ice crystal and freezes, too. The ice crystal gets bigger and bigger until it falls to the ground as snow and rain.
Christner’s research has disclosed that bacteria that lives on plants can also get swept high into the air, where moisture clings to it, forming an ice crystal that grows until it, too, falls as rain or snow. He and his colleagues have identified the rain-generating bacteria on every continent around the globe.
Knowing that the bacteria are part of the weather cycle opens up the possibility that they can be used deliberately to influence weather. Especially intriguing is the possibility of using it to break droughts before the degree of devastation becomes severe.
In what Christner describes as “the intricate interplay between the planet’s climate and biosphere,” his discovery will likely lead to multi-disciplinary studies to determine the extent of the influence on weather these germs play and how that knowledge can be used to the best advantage.
Source: Louisiana State University
- How likely do you think it is that bacteria play a role in our weather?
Loading ...
“He and his colleagues have identified the rain-generating bacteria on every continent around the globe.”
Maybe in our collective zeal to clean up our atmosphere from our own pollution, and regardless of whether it is bacteria or factory soot, we may have unwittingly contributed to the increase in drought conditions?
Now when they bomb us with germs from the sky they have an excuse. “we were just trying to make it rain”. How lame.
I don’t think this is anything new BT (bacillus thuringus) has been used for a decade as snow & ice seeder/maker for ski resorts as well as insulator in the agicultural industries. We have tried seeding the clouds before during devestating droughts in the U.S. several decades ago with no avail. If there is not enough precipitation in the atmosphere no amount of bacteria or dust will make it rain, no clouds no rain.
Fact is that our activities have contrubuted to the overall planetary weather change from what we have experience so far it will be the norm. The weather will become more extreme and unpredictable one way or another.