Live bacteria help create rain,snow, and hail

I have never heard of this before and simply just assumed that what I learned in school about the water cycle was pretty much all there was to know about percipitation. I came across this article today and it was very interesting. Thought I would pass it on and share with the group.

www.livescience.com...

Living bacteria that get whipped up into the sky may be just the spark needed for rain, snow and even hailstorms, research now finds.

Traditionally, researchers have thought that minerals or other particulates in clouds caused water droplets to glom together until they were large enough to fall as raindrops, snowflakes and hail. The new research shows that a large variety of bacteria, and even fungi, diatoms and algae, persist in the clouds and can be used as precipitation starters

I guess now after reading this and thinking about it, it makes sense that bacteria would and could end up being recycled as part of the water cycle. It is just one of those that you never really think about. Kudos for the scientist who thought to take a hailstone and disect it to see what was inside. Who knows what other interesting stuff can come from further research into this.

It could be more than that.

Just as the roots of trees have been found to form a collective sentience across entire forests, Bacteria could collectively share a single awareness. And in this sense it is entirely possible that Bacteria created the entire atmosphere, and all the oceans, for themselves. And we so-called life forms could be the equivalent of their lawn maintenance equipment. Humanity really has no idea how much hail the creator has saved up for the day of war.

Sorry about what I wrote.
I'm well educated in science
and a lifelong Catholic who sees
no conflict in faith and researching.


David Grouchy

Originally posted by lcbjr1979
Kudos for the scientist who thought to take a hailstone and disect it to see what was inside. Who knows what other interesting stuff can come from further research into this.

There is bacteria in our entire atmosphere.
400 times as much over a forest as over desert,
but it is there.


David Grouchy

reply to post by davidgrouchy


No worries, I appreciate the feedback, especially coming from someone who has a background in science.

Funny story about this
when I tried to supliment the research by using the internet about 4 years ago
I ran into a major snag.

Googling up the phrase "Airborne Bacteria" turned up tons and tons of
terrorist stuff, and concerns about terrorism. I had great difficulty
finding any information online about the benevolent kind.


David Grouchy

reply to post by davidgrouchy


lol yeah i can imagine it would have showed virtually every kind of weaponized bacteria or virus. Probably would have taken you about an hour to find what you were looking for.

Actually I immediately closed my browser and
decided that online research was not the way to go on this subject.

I just googled the phrase +"Airborne bacteria" and I'm pleased to see
that the subject is not longer surrounded by homeland security.


David Grouchy

I'm no meteorologist but I always assumed you needed clouds full of water vapor before you get rain. I'm not sure this would work above the Atacama Desert.

Originally posted by Illustronic
I'm no meteorologist but I always assumed you needed clouds full of water vapor before you get rain.

Yes, this is correct.
From what I understand the formation of an actual rain drop was something of a mystery though.
Years ago anyway, not so much any more.

As I followed it,
the first theory was a particle of dust was the catalyst that allowed the moisture vapor to start accreting until the drop became large enough to actually fall.

Then it was discovered that while there was sometimes a particle of dust, there was always bacteria.

And now ... here we are.


As to deserts,
...mind you this is just a tentative untested thesis...
it may be possible that plant life is one of the more effective launch platforms for bacteria to enter the atmosphere by riding on the water vapor that trees and such excrete (unlike what most have been taught, trees eat air and excrete vapor, but that's another discussion) and to increase rainfall in the desert one only has to increase the coverage of plant life. As forests have 400:1 times as much bacteria over them than deserts do.


David Grouchy

reply to post by davidgrouchy


Well said....you did not happen to write the article i linked to did you?

Originally posted by lcbjr1979

Well said....you did not happen to write the article i linked to did you?

I sure didn't ...

I was surprised to learn one day that many people think that trees are made of dirt,
or minerals from the dirt. "What are they teaching people these days?" I thought.

Jan Baptist van Helmont did a famous experiment back in the 16th century where he showed that trees don't use up the soil to grow or build up their mass. Consider it this way. If they did, we would see huge sinking in the land around trees.

He performed an experiment to determine where plants get their mass. He grew a willow tree and measured the amount of soil, the weight of the tree and the water he added. After five years the plant had gained about 164 pounds. Since the amount of soil was basically the same as it had been when he started his experiment, he deduced that the tree's weight gain had come from water. Since it had received nothing but water and the soil weighed practically the same as at the beginning, he argued that the increased weight of wood, bark and roots had been formed from water alone. However, this "deduction" is incomplete, as a large proportion of the mass of the tree comes from atmospheric carbon dioxide, which, in conjunction with water, is turned into carbohydrates via photosynthesis

wikipedia / Van Helmont

While his conclusions were later overturned,
showing that it is the carbon dioxide that provides most of the mass
of which trees are made from, the principle discovery still stands.
He is credited with adding the word "gas" to the language of science.

So trees eat air, and excrete moisture.
Some nutrients come from the ground,
but even that has been shown to be grosly ineficient.


[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/5b1a6cb8fc58.jpg[/atsimg]

Aeroponics is the new super gardening method.

Aeroponics systems can reduce water usage by 98 percent, fertilizer usage by 60 percent, and pesticide usage by 100 percent

nasa.gov/aeroponics

Basically a sprayer that mists the air can be filled with a nutrient solution and the plants love it just fine.



David Grouchy

Any kind of particle can form the nucleus of a raindrop. Water vapor cools as it rises at a predetermined rate depending on whether the ambient air through which it is rising is wet or dry (called the wet and dry adiabatic rates).

The name for this particle is "condensation nuclei" and it basically provides a surface to which the water vapor may condense (similar to when you pull a cold can can or bottle from your refrigerator or cooler - even on a hot, dry day, water vapor in the air will immediately begin to condense onto the cold surface, beading up as drops of water).

This condensation nuclei is typically minute particles of salt, soot, and dust that is already in the atmosphere -indeed without which precipitation would not be possible. As the air rises and cools the condensation nuclei collect the water vapor at a given elevation known as the lifting condensation level (LCL), and appears to us as the flat base of clouds.

If the conditions are right, the air will continue to rise and cool, and, eventually, the cloud droplets coalesce into rain droplets. These are held aloft by the buoyancy if the rising air until so much water vapor condenses that the droplet becomes too heavy and falls to the ground as rain.

The condensation nuclei may also contain any number of other types of particulate matter, including bacteria. This is well documented and common knowledge among geographers, climatologists, and meteorologists. In fact, if this condensation occurs near industrial areas, prevailing winds will carry the process downwind and the rain will also contain toxins and other harmful matter in addition to bacteria - acid rain. This is also well documented.

Sometimes, if the evaporites or evapotranspiration from certain plants, forests, or contaminated soils are the source, a wide range of medical and other issues (e.g., asthma, etc.) may be exacerbated by rain-borne nuclei.

In some deserts of the world, the rain may actually evaporate the water from the rain as it is falling, leaving only the condensation nuclei behind to sprinkle down on the landscape below (or get carried aloft once more where the process cycles anew).

So yes, live bacteria does indeed help create precipitation, as does dead bacteria, dust, salts from the oceans, soot and ash from volcanoes and forest fires, even dander and particles of skin from humans and other animals.

it is the way rain must be made. It is perfectly natural and to be expected... Life on Earth would not be possible without it...

Originally posted by davidgrouchy

Originally posted by lcbjr1979
Kudos for the scientist who thought to take a hailstone and disect it to see what was inside. Who knows what other interesting stuff can come from further research into this.

There is bacteria in our entire atmosphere.
400 times as much over a forest as over desert,
but it is there.

David Grouchy

edit on 25-5-2011 by davidgrouchy because: (no reason given)

I like the way you think. Speaking about bacteria, there are plenty many of human bacteria flora as well: human microbiome.No wonder some peoples knees hurt when it's about to rain