It’s Buggy Out There

Finally Science is starting to recognize the importance of the microorganisms in in the gut; how profoundly they affect health and perhaps even emotion...now Science is seeing how ice-nucleating microbes work to create rainfall for their own benefit. Wouldn't it be interesting if Science, some day, recognized that homo sapiens is not the apex of evolution, but simply another cog in the great wheel of life, no more and no less important than any one-celled creature.

Very good column explaining the phenomena.
Very funny too.
Sneezing continents.

Very interesting article, fascinating , but "...P. syringae and its ilk ...". Come now, a biological terrorist? Darwin would blush.

What a terrific article - very well explained and great dynamic prose.

Those interested in a fictional treatment of microbes and their expansive role in ecosystems should check out Joan Slonczewski's novel The Children Star. Slonczewski is a practicing microbiologist and gets the science right. Her blog is: http://ultraphyte.com/

From my understanding the weather is effected among other things by the ionosphere which is responsive to 10 mega hertz frequencies-a frequency the human brain projects. That insects and animals for that matter also may effect the weather should be of no surprise. The surprise is that global warming due to human activity aside the activity of brain waves seems a much more neglected topic. Also see the Military paper on aiming to control the weather by 2025.
Just saying...

To quote that old commercial, "We're all connected". And to quote the redoubtable Mr. Spock,"Fascinating".

Alright,

Everyone in California put down any anti-bacterial spays/gels you have -
time to do your part in helping to end the drought.

We should keep this research in mind if we explore geo-engineering options, such as putting sulfates into the atmosphere to reflect sunlight (NYT Science Feb 10, 2015, "Panel Urges Research on Geoengineering ..."). What effect would dumping chemicals into the atmosphere have on microbes living there, and potentially on rainfall patterns worldwide? Fascinating article. We are just starting to understand the planet we live on, let's try not to mess it up.

It's all one big interconnected system of systems, which is also where the anthropogenic global warming and other problems begin. In terms of geoengineering solutions to AGW, perhaps instead of seeding the upper atmosphere with reflective particles consisting of chemical compounds, it may be better to seed it with something that metabolises CO2 or CH4 that can replicate as needed and die off naturally as its food source is reduced.

But humans need to reduce their energy use, perhaps reduce population or at least stabilise it, and figure out ways to live sustainably. This is hardest task I think to ever come in front of us, and it's not just about new infinite energy sources. Even if we had such a source, the heat output would increase if the world had a standard of living that matched what I have.

I wonder if the extreme drought that Brazil is facing is due primarily to deforestation.

Microbes are ubiquitous in all cranes and nooks imaginable, certainly 'on and in' our bodies, including viruses, whose DNA/RNA may be an integral part of our inner structures, perhaps even contributing to what makes us 'tick'. Luckily, as weather sneezes its microbial content into air, land and water, what seems to make us immune to its potential ravage is the tolerable measured dosage it entails. Even pearls know they need, for its inception, a dose of sneezing dust.

We know so little as to how our atmosphere works and yet there are those planning to constrain global warming by geoengineering our planet. We are centuries from understanding how our complex global environment works. The best we can do is live by the credo, "Do no harm." Instead of geoengineering our way out of the mess our polluting way of living has caused, it would be much easier to stop polluting and letting the earth heal itself.

Everything is alive. From the ground beneath our feet to the sky above our heads, we are surrounded by and enclosed in a web of life. When we recognize this, we will better understand our human impact on the environment, and be better able to integrate with it for its benefit and ours.

Snomax sounds quite allergenic. Not sure the Bill Hamilton citation is appropriate. Many have said the same or similar things, and this area certainly wasn't Bill's forté.

Read more about this, including the futility of W. D. Hamilton's theory, in "The Amoeba in the Room" (Oxford University Press, 2014).

In summer, the Florida peninsula generates much of its own weather, thanks to sea breezes that provide convection leading to showers and thunderstorms. Evaporation from land vegetation, lakes, and marshes also contributes. There's now a long record of how fast this local weather happens from the heavily-instrumented marshes of the upper St. Johns River, which have undergone extensive restoration. I'm not competent to comment on results, but it does look as though improved marshes yield more rain.

As for nucleating materials, Florida and the Caribbean get dust blown from the Sahara. Some years it's heavy enough to be noticeable, and to influence the hurricane season.

Another factor, perhaps, is that the first thunderstorms of the rainy season, usually in May, historically set off lots of fires that burned through the grass and palmettos of pinelands, generating yet more local convection and sending lots of particles skyward.

Bacteria, in this context, don't seem at all odd.