Caught bacteria from the most pristine air on earth

to help solve a climate modeling mystery

Jun Uetake, Postdoctoral Atmospheric Scientist, Colorado State University,

Thomas Hill, Research Scientist, Colorado State University, and Kathryn Moore,
PhD student in Atmospheric Science, Colorado State University
Sun, January 3, 2021, 3:21 PM GMT

Not all clouds are the same, and climate models have been predicting the wrong kinds of
clouds over the Southern Ocean. Kathryn Moore, CC BY-ND

The Southern Ocean is a vast band of open water that encircles the entire planet
between

Antarctica and the Southern Hemisphere landmasses. It is the cloudiest place on Earth,
and the amount of sunlight that reflects off or passes through those clouds plays a
surprisingly important role in global climate. It affects weather patterns, ocean currents,
Antarctic sea ice cover, sea surface temperature and even rainfall in the tropics.

But due to how remote the Southern Ocean is, there have been very few actual studies
of the clouds there.

Because of this lack of data, computer models that simulate present and future climates
overpredict how much sunlight reaches the ocean surface compared to what satellites
actually observe. The main reason for this inaccuracy is due to how the models simulate
clouds, but nobody knew exactly why the clouds were off. For the models to run
correctly, researchers needed to understand how the clouds were being formed.

To discover what is actually happening in clouds over the Southern Ocean, a small army
of atmospheric scientists, including us, went to find out how and when clouds form in
this remote part of the world. What we found was surprising – unlike the Northern
Hemisphere oceans, the air we sampled over the Southern Ocean contained almost no
particles from land.

This means the clouds might be different from those above other oceans, and we can
use this knowledge to help improve the climate models.
Ice clouds and liquid clouds
Clouds are made of tiny water droplets or ice crystals, or often a mixture of the two.
These form on small particles in the air. The type of particle plays a big role in
determining whether a liquid droplet or ice crystal forms. These particles can be natural
– like sea spray, pollen, dust or even bacteria – or from human sources like cars, stoves,
power plants and so on.

To the untrained eye, an ice cloud and a liquid cloud look much the same, but they have
very different properties. Ice clouds reflect less sunlight, precipitate more and don’t last
as long as liquid clouds. It matters to the weather – and to climate models – what kinds
of clouds are around.

Climate models tend to predict too many ice clouds over the Southern Ocean and not
enough liquid clouds when compared to satellite readings. But satellite measurements
around the poles are hard to make and less accurate than other regions, so we wanted
to collect direct evidence of how many liquid clouds are actually present and determine
why there were more than the models predict.
This was the mystery: Why are there more liquid clouds than the models think there
are? To solve it, we needed to know what kinds of particles are floating around in the
atmosphere around Antarctica.

Before we went down there, we had a few clues.

Previous modeling studies have suggested that the ice–forming particles found over the
Southern Ocean may be very different from those found in the Northern Hemisphere.

Dust is a great ice cloud seeder, but due to the lack of dusty land sources in the
Southern Hemisphere, some scientists have hypothesized that other types of particles
might be driving ice cloud formation over the Southern Ocean.

Since most models are based on data from the Northern Hemisphere, if the particles in
the atmosphere were somehow different in the Southern Hemisphere, that might explain
the errors.
Bacterial maps
It’s hard to directly measure the composition of particles over the Southern Ocean –
there simply aren’t very many particles around. So, to help us track down what is inside
the clouds, we used an indirect approach: the bacteria in the air. The atmosphere is full
of microorganisms that are carried hundreds to thousands of kilometers on air currents
before returning to Earth. These bacteria are like airborne license plates, they are
unique and tell you where the car – or air – came from. Since scientists know where
most bacteria live, it’s possible to look at the microbes in an air sample and determine
where that air came from. And once you know that, you can predict where the particles
in the air came from as well - the same place the bacteria usually live.

In order to sample airborne bacteria in this remote ocean region, one of us headed out
on the Australian Marine National Facility’s R/V Investigator for a six-week expedition.
The weather was unruly and the waves were often white-capped, but for one to two
days at a time, we sucked air from the bow of the ship through a filter that caught the
airborne particles and bacteria. We then froze the filters to keep the bacterial DNA
intact.
Ocean bacteria alone
In most ocean regions around the world, especially in the Northern Hemisphere where
there is a lot of land, the air contains both marine and terrestrial particles. That’s what
we expected to find down south.

With the frozen filters safely back at our lab in Colorado, we extracted DNA from the
bacteria and sequenced it to determine what species we had caught. Much to our
surprise, the bacteria were essentially all marine species that live in the Southern
Ocean. We found almost no land-based bacteria.

If the bacteria were from the ocean, then so were the cloud-forming particles. This was
the answer we were looking for.

Ice nucleating particles are very rare in seawater and marine particles are very good at
forming liquid clouds. With mostly marine-based particles in the air, we’d expect the
clouds to mostly be made of liquid droplets, which is what we observed. Since most
models treat clouds in this region the same way they do clouds in the dustier Northern
Hemisphere, it’s no wonder the models were off.

Going forward
Now that we know the summertime Southern Ocean clouds are being formed from
purely marine particles, we need to figure out if the same is true in other seasons and at
higher altitudes. The larger project, which involved planes as well as ships, has given
atmospheric scientists a much better idea of the clouds both close to the ocean surface
and high up in the atmosphere. The climate modelers among us are already
incorporating these new data into their models and will hopefully have results to share
soon.

Discovering that the airborne particles over the Southern Ocean are mostly coming from
the ocean is a remarkable finding. It not only improves global climate models, it also
means we confirmed the Southern Ocean is one of the most environmentally pristine
regions on Earth – a place that has probably changed very little due to human activities.
Our work will hopefully improve climate models, but has also given researchers a
baseline for what a truly pristine marine environment looks like.

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This article is republished from The Conversation, a nonprofit news site dedicated to
sharing ideas from academic experts.

This research was funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF). Related research was funded by the
Department of Energy. I also receive funding from the NSF through a Graduate Research Fellowship. This
research was supported by US NSF Award 1660486. Related research was funded by the Department of
Energy.